• Enjoy a pick-up from your hotel in Saigon and then drive for about 2 hours to Ben Tre.

• On arrival at Hung Vuong pier, board the boat that will cruise along the Ham Luong river (a branch of the Mekong) and stop off at various local workplaces to give you a picture of how the local economy works, including:

  • Brick-kiln, where bricks are still painstakingly made by hand. 

  • Coconut processing workshop, where you can sample fresh coconut and see how every part of this versatile nut is turned into food and other products.

  • Mat weaving house, where straw mats are woven using a handloom – you can even have a go at weaving yourself!

• Hop onto a bicycle for a 15 km fun ride through the quiet and beautiful country lane with various gardens such as coconuts, casaba melon; cucumber; colocynth along the roadside to Mr Khanh’s local house, where you can contemplate an antique pottery collection.

• Get back on your bike and cycle to visit rice fields with your Vietnamese tour guide. 

• Stop at a riverside restaurant for a delicious and filling lunch featuring local specialities such as elephant-ear fish and river shrimp, washed down with cold drinks or beers.

• After lunch, board a rowing boat for a relaxing trip along narrow canals.

• Head back to Hung Vuong Pier via Ham Luong. 

• Catch a Co Chien ferry for Can Tho and check into a hotel for the night.

• Set out on a very early boat trip at 5 am to visit the unique and stunning floating markets of Phong Dien and Cai Rang. You need to sit back on your boat, enjoy the morning coffee served by the local coffee boat, and watch the whole world of trading going on from boat to boat. As the boat edges through the market, you will be driven back to the yester-centuries by the sound of bargaining, rowing, motoring mixed with the sound from the coffee boat, meat boat, grocery boat, iceboats.

• Leaving Phong Dien floating market, your boat will speed up through many channels of the Mekong River stretching along with rural villages and arrive at Cai Rang floating market (3 km from Can Tho). It is much bigger and a wholesale market with many more big and motored boats. And this will complete an exceptional picture of around a million floating traders in this region who have been happily living a floating life and earn their living on some 50,000km of waterways in the Mekong Delta.

• Stop at a local fruit orchard where you can enjoy tropical fruit and understand more about local life.

• Return to your hotel for check out and head to Rach Gia to catch the Super Dong Express boat at 1p m to Phu Quoc Island.

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