Ho Chi Mihn City: Mekong by Boat and Rickshaw

In February 2024, Jill and I toured Southeast Asia by land and by sea. We sailed from Thailand to Hong Kong on board the Crystal Symphony and spent two days in Bangkok and two days in Hong Kong before and after our cruise. We had an epic adventure!

Click HERE to read a short introduction to our journey.

This story, part of a series, is about our day in Ben Tre, Vietnam—time spent observing many age-old traditions and local culture. We left Ben Tre with memories for a lifetime!

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On a canal in Ben Tre

​Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam (February 20, 2024) Around 6AM, the Crystal Symphony sailed from the South China Sea into the mouth of Song Soai Rap (‘song’ is the Vietnamese word for ‘river’), and I was on deck to snap this photo as the new-day’s sun cast its orange glow across the horizon.

The temperature was 79 degrees—still relatively cool—but the humidity was a staggering 94%. There was a slight breeze off the waters from the southeast, and that helped a bit. 

Soon the Soai Rap merged with the Song Vam Co to form the Song Nha Be, and it was this river, busy with tugs that pushed barges loaded with grain, that the Symphony followed to SPCT, an acronym for the cruise ship port for Ho Chi Minh City. There, a fleet of motor coach buses eagerly awaited Jill, me, and other passengers, ready to transport us on our chosen tours.  

Several weeks ago, Jill and I booked ‘Mekong by Boat & River,’ an 11-hour tour that included a scenic drive through the countryside to Ben Tre in southeastern Vietnam and a boat ride on the picturesque Mekong River.

“Dad, be sure you have your landing card,” Jill reminded me before we left our cabin.

Vietnam was the only country we visited where we needed a landing card, which allowed us to enter Vietnam without a government issued visa. We presented this card to a Vietnamese security officer at the gangway when we exited and re-boarded the ship…and not just this day, but every day we went on tour in Vietnam.

“Got it,” I replied. 

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There were only 16 passengers including Jill and me on our tour, and with a full-sized bus, each of us had a bench to ourselves. Our tour guide, Hung, counted noses, and then gave the driver a thumbs up. It was 9:15—time to start our adventure.
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As an aside, the guides I encountered from Thailand to Hong Kong introduced themselves with an American name. Hung, for example, said, “You can call me Ken.” I guess an American name was easier for most English-speaking tourists, but I made it a point of asking every guide their given name…and that was the name I called them by. 

This was the route we followed, an arcing path past the outskirts of Ho Chi Minh City that hooked west and then south. The distance was only 73 miles, but incredibly it took more than three hours to make this drive because of slow-moving, bumper-to-bumper traffic around Ho Chi Minh City—a city of more than 10 million people—and a 30-minute stop at a gift shop in My Tho, ostensibly for a potty break…but in reality, to help support the local economy. Jill and I did our part, as we each purchased a bagful of products made from bamboo.  

I enjoyed the ride through the countryside—that is, once we left the traffic of Ho Chi Minh City behind. I saw rice paddies for the first time (top two photos), and the homes in which rural people lived. Unlike the mountain areas in the far north, this area of Vietnam was low and flat…and it was green, as this region received more than 60 inches of rain on average per year. 

We crossed the mighty Mekong River, and as we did, I spotted what appeared to be floating houses. I asked Hung about this.

“There are floating villages up and down this river. The houses are built on pontons or empty oil drums, and since they’re not anchored, the villages will slowly drift downstream. Some villages have small shops where villagers buy basic items, and many villagers keep small gardens, raise chickens, and fish, so there’s really no need for them to set foot on land.”

Imagine that!

The Ben Tre and other rivers we cruised this day were part of the Mekong Delta, the region in southwestern Vietnam where the 3,000-mile-long Mekong River—the third-longest river in Asia and twelfth-longest river in the world—through a network of canals, channels, and rivers including Ben Tre (collectively known as distributaries) emptied into the sea.  

Thirty minutes further on, our bus stopped in Ben Tre. We followed Hung a short distance along a forested path—primarily coconut trees—to the edge of a river where we boarded a boat for our scenic ride on the Mekong. But as I soon learned, this river wasn’t THE Mekong.  Rather, it was Song Ben Tre—the Ben Tre River, which flows 24 miles east to west through Ben Tre Province. 

So, while we did not sail on THE Mekong River, we navigated through its shared waters. And in my book, that was close enough…because a river’s a river, and our ride WAS scenic and OH-so-relaxing! 

A half hour downriver, we stopped at a coconut farm where a young lady demonstrated the art of opening a coconut...with a machete! I counted her fingers. Yep. She had 10, with five on each hand!

“Who would like coconut water?” Hung asked.

Jill raised her hand, and so did I as did others. Hung handed a coconut with a straw to each of us. The flavor was pure coconut, and the taste was refreshing!

The temperature, by the way, had climbed to the mid-90s. It was somewhere between warm and hot but made bearable by a partly cloudy sky.  

What came next, soon after we reboarded our boat, was a surprise—a ride in a rustic rowboat through narrow, lush canals. “Watch your step,” I said to Jill as we walked from one boat to the other, one passenger at a time.

In days past, Vietnamese villagers used these boats in their daily lives for work, transport, and trade. Many still do, Hung told us, while others, like these enterprising folks, discovered that tourists wanted—and would pay for—a more personal experience than the larger boats provided. 

I must tell you something I thought was quite remarkable: even though we were near Ben Tre (pop. 125,000), it felt as if we were in the middle of nowhere, so I was surprised to find I had an internet connection...and with it, that I was able to video chat with Debra, my wife. 

“Hon, take a look at this,” I said as I slowing scanned the waterway from front to back and side to side. “Jill and I are in a rowboat on a canal near a remote village.” And then I pointed the camera at Jill and said, “Say hi to mom.” She did, and so did our river boat guide, Phuong, who was sitting next to her. 

Needless to say, Debra was tickled pink—her eyes lit up as she took in the sights, and a smile crept onto her face—and so was I to have her join me, thousands of miles apart, as I glided along this waterway.  

The rowboats stopped along the edge of the canal, and from there we walked 100 feet to a covered patio, where we sat and sipped a cup of hot tea. We didn’t linger long, though.

“Time for our rickshaw ride,” said Hung.

Except it wasn’t a rickshaw…well, it wasn’t a traditional rickshaw. Instead, it was an auto rickshaw—not too different from the tuk-tuks Jill and I rode in Bangkok.

We rode the rickshaw to our boat, which was docked nearby on the Ben Tre River, and cruised to our next stop—a family-run business, where Mai (a name that means ‘yellow flower’) demonstrated the art of opening a coconut with traditional tools. 

First, Mai removed the husk by thrusting it down onto a metal spike. Once, twice, and a third time, as I recall, to break the husk into large pieces, which she easily separated from the shell. 

Next, Mai cracked and pried open the shell with a machete and drained the water into a large metal pot (because nothing goes to waste). When drained, she used the machete to split the shell in half. And yes, I counted her fingers, too. Ten in total, five on each hand!

Finally, Mai pushed the open end of one half the shell onto a perpendicular metal spike and turned it…and turned it…and turned it to remove the meat, which fell into a bowl. The meat was made into traditional sweet candies, known as ‘mut dua’ in Vietnamese. 

Easy-peasy…with her well-practiced hands.

And then, with a mischievous twinkle in her eye, she held out the shell and invited us—anyone—to have a go at removing the meat, just as she had done. I was game. Guess what? It wasn’t easy, but I managed to grind some meat from the shell before I turned it over to a fellow passenger eager to give it a try.

Boy, I thought. Glad I don’t have to do this for a living!

This family also had a large retail store filled with mostly handmade products, and—no surprise—we had 20 minutes to shop.

“Ahh…another opportunity to support the local economy,” I whispered to Jill.

And of course, we did. 

I won’t burden you with all my purchases—they were many, and mostly for Debra—but I do want to share one: snake wine, an alcoholic beverage produced by infusing whole snakes in rice wine or grain alcohol. This alcoholic beverage, first recorded more than 3,000 years ago, has long been considered a traditional Chinese medicine used to treat varied health problems, including back pain, arthritis, dry skin, and even hair loss.

Hung saw me eyeing the bottles for sale and asked, “Would you like to try some?”

Without hesitating—I readily accepted that it was safe to drink—I said, “Sure!” 

He spoke to the shop owner, who poured shots for Hung and me. Not from a bottle, mind you, but ladled from the large glass jar you see in this pic…a large glass jar that housed two cobras. (Dead, of course!) And get this: she poured the wine through the top of the cobra’s head—the one on the left—and as she did, I watched drain from the cobra’s mouth into the glass!

(Did I gross you out?!)

Hung said, “Here’s a traditional way to say ‘cheers’ in Vietnamese—mot, hai, ba.”
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I repeated, “Mot, hai, ba,” and with that, it was down the hatch.

How did it taste? There was nothing remarkable about it. Still, I bought this small bottle, which I’ve since displayed in my office. Why? Bragging rights—with evidence—of the time in Vietnam I threw caution to the wind with a shot of snake wine!

I checked my watch as we reboarded the boat. It was four o’clock, well past lunch time…and a long, long time, it seemed, since breakfast early this morning. 

“Good news,” Hung said, as if he had read my mind. “We will soon arrive at Mango Home Riverside, where we will have lunch.”

Mango House, which opened in 2011, is a boutique resort nestled on the banks of a peaceful river in the outskirts of Ben Tre. I Googled the name to learn more.

The resort, I read, has five airconditioned suites with ensuite washrooms, lush gardens, a year-round pool, and an in-house restaurant that offers authentic local dishes prepared with locally sourced ingredients.  

I didn’t need a room, but I liked the sound of the food!

A view from the patio

This is Hou, a member of the staff. He spoke a few words of English, which was how I learned his name. I smiled when he told me because I heard him say “How.” And then I said to him, “My name is Howard. We’re Hou and Howard!”

He understood and smiled broadly.

Here was our five-course meal, served family-style, in six photos, starting with soup and ending with fruit…

The steamed prawns, a specialty of the region, were delicious…but so was every dish, including the bananas and watermelon we had for dessert. Everything was flavorful—no need to season anything—and I could ‘taste’ the fresh ingredients in each course. It was a delightful meal in a beautiful setting! 

I know what you’re thinking: it’s been a long day, and it’s time to head to the ship. Not yet, as there were two more stops, and our group reached both on motor rickshaws.

The first was this house, which had a lovely façade of stone and tile. But that wasn’t why we were there. 

Around the corner was a large wooden shed with corrugated metal siding that housed a still where the owner made wine from coconuts and bananas following an age-old process.  I tried a wee nip of both—first the banana, which was amber-colored, and then the coconut. Both wines captured the essence of the fruit they were made from—subtle, not overly—and while neither wine was incredible, both were drinkable, which is to say, both were good quality wines. Mot, hai, ba!

And then we reached our last stop, where we learned how rice paper, known as ‘banh trang’ in Vietnamese, was made following a traditional process—an age-old art—from cooking the batter atop a piping hot stone oven to drying the finished sheets on a bamboo rack.

Phuong said, “In my country, only women make rice paper—as it has been for hundreds of years.”
He introduced us to Linh, a name that means ‘spirit’ or ‘soul.’ How appropriate, I thought, for someone whose face seemed etched with a lifetime of experience.

Phuong continued, “Her day started at dawn, when she ground the rice that soaked overnight to create a liquid form. And she will work into evening to produce hundreds of round sheets of rice paper, which her family sells locally.”


“How do people use rice paper?” I asked.

“They wrap foods they cook—rice, pork, shrimp, and other ingredients—to make spring rolls, dumplings, and other dishes,” Phuong replied.

And then Linh demonstrated the baking process.

First, she ladled a scoop of the liquid—‘batter’, for lack of a better term—onto a mesh-covered stone plate heated atop a wood-burning stove. Linh used the ladle to smooth the batter into a round form, and then covered it with a conical ‘hat’ made from the leaves of a coconut tree to gently bake the rice paper for 20 seconds or so. It wasn’t a real hat, of course, but it looked like the ‘non dang,’ sometimes called a ‘paddy hat’—a pointed hat worn by rice farmers for thousands of years.  

Next, Linh lifted an edge of the rice paper with a long metal spatula—a home-made implement, and not store-bought—which she then rolled up on a tube covered in fabric so as not to tear the paper-thin pancake. Then, Linh unrolled the rice paper onto a flat rack made of woven bamboo.  

Her motions were fluid, influenced by years and years of work, and like Mai, Linh made her work look easy.

And then Phuong said, “Would anyone like to try?”

Jill raised her hand, and in short order, with a bit of help from Linh, she produced a rounded sheet of rice paper.

I said, "Well done, Jill!” 

“That was fun,” she replied.

And that was the end of our adventure into Ben Tre, but for the bus ride—almost three hours—back to the ship.

It was a long day…but it was a great day, one in which I learned new things about Vietnam and the Vietnamese, saw firsthand many of this country’s long-practiced rural traditions, and captured memories for a lifetime.   

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It was a bit past eight when Jill and I reboarded the Symphony…and we were beat. We showered, called room service for dinner—I cannot even remember what I ate—and relaxed in our cabin until it was time to go to bed.

We had an overnight stay—a sleepover!—at the port for Ho Chi Minh City, and both Jill and I had similar but separate half-day excursions on tap before we set sail for Chan May. I look forward to sharing my excursion with you in my next story.