Mekong Delta: Boat, Pagoda & Fruit Garden Day Trip from Saigon

4.89

(188 reviews)

What’s the experience like?

The first thing I remember is our guide Hien grinning at my confused face outside the hotel in Saigon — she was holding a tiny lotus flower, said it was for luck. The bus ride to My Tho wasn’t long (maybe an hour and a half?), but I kept watching the city fade into green fields and little roadside shrines. We stopped at Vinh Trang Pagoda before anything else. There were these huge Buddha statues staring serenely over the gardens, and I could smell incense even before we got off the bus. Hien told us about the monks who still live there — one of them nodded at me as I tried to tie my shoelace back on (it never stays tied when I travel).

After that, we hopped onto a motorboat and drifted out onto the Mekong River. It’s wide and brown and busy — fishing boats everywhere, some with painted eyes on their bows. We passed floating fish farms and stilt houses where kids waved at us from wooden balconies. At some point we switched to a hand-rowed sampan for the canals, which got so quiet you could hear birds in the palms overhead. The air felt heavy but sweet from all the fruit trees along the banks. I didn’t expect to like honey tea so much — it’s sticky-sweet but somehow refreshing after sweating through my shirt (Vietnamese summer is no joke). Local musicians played something soft while we ate tropical fruit; I couldn’t name half of it but it was juicy and cold.

Coconut Island was next — you can actually watch people making coconut candy by hand. It smells like burnt sugar mixed with wood smoke in there. I tried saying thank you in Vietnamese (“cảm ơn”) and totally messed it up; Li laughed and handed me another piece anyway. Lunch was simple but perfect: rice, fish cooked in clay pot, vegetables that tasted like they’d just been picked from someone’s backyard. Afterward we took old bikes around a village path — chickens everywhere, kids playing marbles in the dust. The whole day felt like being gently nudged into someone else’s rhythm for a while.

I still think about that slow boat ride through the canal — how quiet everything got except for paddles dipping into water and someone humming behind me. If you’re looking for a Mekong Delta tour from Ho Chi Minh City that doesn’t feel rushed or fake, this one really does let you breathe for a bit.