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A vendor in a conical hat prepares pineapples on a river boat while a tourist reaches for the produce near Can Tho.

Southern Vietnam

A night in Can Tho, the market at first light

The only way to see Cai Rang while it is still a market is to sleep beside it. This trip does that, and adds the small canals most boats never turn into.

Overview

Why this trip has a night in it

Cai Rang is a wholesale market. Boats loaded with pineapples, pumpkins or sweet potatoes sell to smaller boats that will resell on land, and the whole exchange happens between first light and about half past seven. Saigon is three to three and a half hours away by the expressway and the two big bridges. No day trip can get there while the trading is on, which is why we only sell Cai Rang with a night in Can Tho.

We should be plain about one thing. The market is smaller than it was ten years ago. Better roads and lorries now carry much of the produce that used to move by water, and on a quiet weekday you may count dozens of trading boats rather than hundreds. It is still a real market doing real business, and at six in the morning it is worth the alarm. It is not the crowded postcard some brochures still print.

Vendors in conical hats row wooden boats along a river at a floating market in the Mekong Delta.
A wide, muddy river flows under a cloudy evening sky, viewed from the Ham Luong Bridge in the Mekong Delta.
Around six, when the trading is at its busiest. · The promenade the evening before.
Length
2 days, 1 night
Road each way
3 to 3.5 hours
Boat start
05:30 on day two
Back in Saigon
around 15:30
Style
Private, with guide

Nights

Where you sleep

Ho Chi Minh City0Pick-up from your hotel in District 1, 3 or Binh ThanhCan Tho1A riverside hotel within a short walk of the boat pierHo Chi Minh City0Drop-off at your hotel or the airport

Day by day

The two days, hour by hour

Day 1

Saigon to Can Tho, with the afternoon on land

An hour on a bicycle on an orchard island across the river

We collect you at 07:30 and are on the expressway south within the hour, traffic allowing. The road crosses the Tien river at My Thuan and the Hau river at Can Tho, the two main branches of the Mekong, and your guide uses the drive to explain how the delta actually works: the tides that reach this far inland, the three rice crops a year, the reason houses face the water.

Lunch is in Can Tho around 11:30, at a family place that does fish from the river and a sour soup with whatever is in season. In the afternoon we go to the Binh Thuy old house, a nineteenth-century merchant house with French tiles and Chinese carving, then cross to one of the orchard islands for an hour on foot or by bicycle under the fruit trees.

You are at the hotel by about 16:30. The evening is yours. Walk the riverfront, eat at the night market, and go to bed early, because the boat leaves before sunrise.

StayRiverside hotel in Can ThoMealsLunchTravel3 to 3.5 hours

Day 2

Cai Rang at dawn, the small canals, back to Saigon

The narrow canals towards Phong Dien after the market

Your guide meets you in the lobby at 05:15 and the boat pulls away from the pier at 05:30. It is a small wooden boat for your party only, which matters: it can slip between the trading boats and turn into channels the two-deck barges cannot. You reach Cai Rang in about twenty-five minutes and spend an hour among the boats, with coffee and a bowl of noodles bought from a floating kitchen.

From around 07:15 we head upriver on the narrow canals towards Phong Dien, stopping at a family workshop that makes rice noodle sheets by hand. The boat is back at the pier by 09:30, which leaves time for a proper breakfast and a shower before an 11:00 check-out.

We leave Can Tho at about 11:30, stop for lunch on the way and have you back at your hotel around 15:30. Allow an hour more on Sunday afternoons and before public holidays, when half of Saigon is driving home from the delta at the same time.

MealsBreakfast, lunchTravel3 to 3.5 hoursOn footUnder 2 km
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Price

Price

TravellersTier 1 — simpleTier 2 — comfortableTier 3 — the good ones
2 travellingfrom 195from 245from 370
4 travellingfrom 160from 200from 305
6 travellingfrom 145from 180from 275
Per person in US dollars, private trip, sharing a double or twin room. The three hotel tiers are the ones described on our How we book page. High season and single rooms cost more; your quote is itemised.

The biggest variable is the hotel tier: Can Tho has good value at the simple end and one or two properties that justify the step up. Party size matters because the car, the guide and the boat cost the same whether they carry two people or six. Saturday nights and the week around Tet cost more, and we will tell you when a date is expensive before you commit to it.

Included

What is included

What the price includes

  • Private air-conditioned car and driver for both days
  • English-speaking guide from pick-up to drop-off
  • Small private boat on the morning of day two
  • One night in Can Tho at your chosen hotel tier, with breakfast
  • Two lunches, entrance fees and bottled water in the car

What it does not include

  • Dinner on the first evening, so you can choose it yourself
  • Drinks with meals, tips and personal spending
  • Travel insurance and visas
  • Airport transfers outside the start and end of the trip

Practical

Timing and what to bring

September to November is the high-water season, when the rivers are brown and full and the orchards stand in water; it is the most striking time to be here. December to April is dry and easier on the bicycle. From May to August the afternoons bring a heavy shower, which rarely touches the morning on the river.

Bring a light layer for the boat at dawn, a hat for later, sun cream and sandals you do not mind getting wet. Keep your camera in a dry bag or a plastic bag in the boat. The market is the same every day of the week except the first days of Tet, when almost every boat stays home.

Colorful clothes hang on a bamboo pole outside a weathered wooden house in the Mekong Delta.
The pole shows what the boat is selling.
A wooden boat glides along a narrow, palm-lined canal in the Mekong Delta, Vietnam.
The quieter water upstream.
A two-tiered pavilion with green tile roofs and red columns houses a memorial stele in the Mekong Delta.
A merchant house from the nineteenth century.
Villagers weave bamboo baskets by hand at a workshop in the Mekong Delta.
A noodle workshop on the canal.

Not for everyone

Who this does not suit

This trip does not suit anyone who will not get up at five. The market is the reason for the night and it is over by eight; a late start turns it into a boat ride past empty water. It is not for travellers who want the delta without a car, either, since there are six to seven hours of road across the two days.

If you only have ten days in Vietnam and have not yet seen the centre or the north, we would usually leave this out. And if you have already slept at Chau Doc or on An Binh island, a second delta night here will feel familiar.

Common questions

Questions travellers ask most

Is Cai Rang floating market still worth seeing?

Yes, if you are there by six. It is smaller than it was a decade ago because much of the produce now moves by road, but it is still a working wholesale market and the canals around it are as good as ever.

Can we do this trip in one day instead?

Not with the market in it. A day trip reaches Cai Rang around ten, when the trading is finished. Our one-day delta trips go to Cai Be, Vinh Long and Ben Tre instead.

Is the boat private?

Yes. It is a small wooden boat for your party with a local boat driver and your guide aboard.

Can we fly out of Can Tho instead of returning to Saigon?

Yes. Can Tho has flights to Hanoi, Da Nang and Phu Quoc, and we can end the trip at the airport after the market.

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A vendor in a conical hat prepares pineapples on a river boat while a tourist reaches for the produce near Can Tho.

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