Saigon, Cu Chi and the Mekong, five days

At a glance

Duration

5 days, 4 nights

Party size

2 to 8, private

Starts

Ho Chi Minh City, Tan Son Nhat airport

Ends

Ho Chi Minh City, Tan Son Nhat airport

Effort

Easy — one long driving day and one 05:00 start

From

USD 1,090 per person

Who this is for

Two things pull in opposite directions on a short southern trip. Ho Chi Minh City rewards more than one day, because its interest is not a list of monuments but the way a city of nine million actually functions at seven in the morning and nine at night. The delta rewards more than one day for the opposite reason: nothing there happens quickly, and the parts worth seeing happen at dawn.

This route solves that by refusing to do both properly and admitting it. You get two full nights in the city, a day at the tunnels, and then a single delta base with two nights in it, which is enough for the Cai Rang market at first light and a second morning on the smaller canals without any of the packing and unpacking that a delta circuit involves. Nobody sleeps in four different provinces.

If the delta is the point of your trip and the city is not, take the five-day delta circuit instead, which never returns to Ho Chi Minh City until the last afternoon. If you have only three days in the south, the three-day delta trip or four days in the city are the honest alternatives.

Day by day

Day 1

Arrive in Ho Chi Minh City

Your guide and driver meet you inside the arrivals hall at Tan Son Nhat with a name board. The airport sits inside the city rather than outside it, so the transfer is short in kilometres and unpredictable in minutes: twenty on a good afternoon, fifty in the six o’clock crush. Rooms are held from midday.

If you land before three we walk District 1 in the late afternoon: the Reunification Palace from the outside or in, depending on your energy, the central post office, and the cathedral, which has been under a long restoration and is often closed to casual visits. We tell you which before the day rather than on the pavement. The evening is yours. We send a short list of three places at three price levels within walking distance and book a table if you want one.

StayHotel in District 1, class as chosenMealsNoneTravel20 to 50 minutes from Tan Son Nhat, depending on the hourOn foot2 to 3 km, flat, evening

Day 2

The city: the war museum, then Cho Lon

The War Remnants Museum at 07:30, before the coaches

Start at 07:30, which is when the War Remnants Museum opens and roughly ninety minutes before the tour groups arrive. It is a hard museum and it is presented from one side, which we say in advance so that you can decide how long you want in it. Two hours is normal; some people leave after forty minutes and that is a reasonable response.

The rest of the day goes west into Cho Lon, the Chinese quarter, which most short visits skip entirely. Binh Tay market is a wholesale building rather than a souvenir one, Thien Hau temple burns coils of incense that hang from the roof beams for weeks, and Hai Thuong Lan Ong street sells dried herbs and bark by the sack. Lunch is there. The afternoon finishes early so that the evening is free, and the optional street-food walk in District 4 runs from about 18:00 if you have added it.

StaySame hotel, second nightMealsBreakfast, lunchTravelAbout 1 hour of city driving across the dayOn foot5 to 6 km, flat, hot after eleven

Day 3

Cu Chi in the morning, Can Tho by evening

This is the long day and we would rather name it than dress it up. Leave at 07:30 for Cu Chi, 70 km and about an hour and a half north-west. We use the Ben Duoc section rather than Ben Dinh: it is fifteen kilometres further, it takes a fraction of the traffic, and most of the people there on a weekday are Vietnamese families visiting the memorial temple rather than tour groups. The tunnel sections open to visitors have been widened; the original bores are shown separately and are the size of a chimney flue. There is a rifle range and it is loud. You can decline it and most of our travellers do.

Back through the city around one, then south. Ho Chi Minh City to Can Tho is 170 km and three and a half hours on the expressway and the new bridges. With the Cu Chi leg added, you are in the vehicle for about five and a half hours across the day, which is the price of doing both. Arrival at Can Tho is in time for a walk along the Ninh Kieu quay before dinner. If that day sounds wrong for you, take the option that drops Cu Chi and puts you on the river by two in the afternoon.

StayRiverfront hotel near Ninh Kieu quay, Can ThoMealsBreakfast, lunchTravelAbout 5 hrs 30 across the day, 240 km in totalOn foot2 km at Cu Chi, plus an evening stroll

Day 4

Cai Rang at dawn, then the small canals

Cai Rang between 05:45 and 07:00, then the Phong Dien canals

The boat leaves the quay at 05:15 and is at Cai Rang by a quarter to six. The market is wholesale and it works roughly from 05:30 to 08:00, boats selling to boats, each one advertising its cargo by hanging a sample from a pole at the bow. It is smaller every year — bridges and refrigerated lorries have taken most of the trade — and it is still a working market rather than a display. The hour you arrive decides whether you believe that.

Rather than return to the hotel and stop, the boat carries on into the narrower canals towards Phong Dien, where the water is a lane between orchards and the traffic is households rather than barges. Breakfast is a bowl of hu tieu at a canal-side stall. Back by ten, and the rest of the day is genuinely free: the hotel pool, the Binh Thuy house from the 1870s, or a bicycle on the flat lanes across the river. Dinner is your own on the quay.

StaySame hotel, second nightMealsBreakfast, lunchTravelNone; about 4 hours on the water in the morningOn foot2 to 3 km, flat, optional

Day 5

Can Tho back to Ho Chi Minh City

A slow morning. Checkout is at noon and we use the hours before it for whichever of yesterday you did not do: the hu tieu noodle workshop, the Chinese temple in the old commercial quarter, or nothing at all on a balcony over the river, which after four days of early starts is a defensible choice.

The drive north is 170 km and three and a half hours with one stop, so a departure from the hotel at 12:30 puts you at Tan Son Nhat around four. A flight after 18:00 is comfortable and one before 16:00 is not. If your ticket is already booked for early afternoon, we start at 08:00 instead and drop the morning entirely rather than drive the expressway at speed.

Stay—MealsBreakfast, lunchTravel3 hrs 30, 170 km to Ho Chi Minh CityOn footUnder 2 km, flat

What it costs

This is the cheapest five-day trip we run in the south, for a structural reason rather than a promotional one: there are only two hotels across five days and one of them is in a city with a genuine oversupply of good rooms. Ho Chi Minh City is the one place in Vietnam where the Excellent column buys a noticeably better room for a small step in price, which is why we would push most people up one column here and not on a route through provincial towns.

Party size does the rest of the work. The vehicle, the driver, the guide and the private boat at Cai Rang are all charged per unit, not per head, so a party of six pays roughly three quarters of what a couple pays for exactly the same days. The full breakdown of what sits behind these figures is on what a Vietnam trip costs, and the deposit and cancellation terms are on how to book.

Included and not included

Pictures from this route

Who this trip is not for

Say no now rather than on Day 3.

• Anyone who cannot spend about five and a half hours in a vehicle on Day 3. Cu Chi is north-west of the city and Can Tho is south-west, so the two do not sit on one line. The option that drops Cu Chi exists precisely for this and costs you nothing.
• People who are claustrophobic. The Ben Duoc tunnel section is low, dark and narrow even after widening, and the short crawl is the part most visitors remember. You can skip it and see the rest of the site above ground, but you should know before booking.
• Travellers who want the delta itself rather than a sample of it. Two nights in Can Tho shows you one province out of thirteen. The five-day delta circuit is the trip that takes the region seriously.
• Anyone unwilling to be at a boat at 05:15. Cai Rang is a wholesale market that has finished by eight, and there is no later version of it.
• People who find war sites distressing to the point of ruining a holiday. Two of the five days here — the museum morning and the tunnel day — deal directly with the war, and both can be replaced on request, but the trip is then a different one.

How the days actually run