Around Ho Chi Minh City
Ho Chi Minh City beyond the Mekong Delta
The Mekong Delta day trip takes most of a day on its own. Here's how it sits alongside the rest of a Ho Chi Minh City trip, and what to do with the days either side of it.
See Mekong Delta tickets on GetYourGuide ↗Fitting it into a trip
| When | Why it works | |
|---|---|---|
| This tour | Full day, ~07:30–16:00/17:00 | One long day; give it its own slot rather than stacking it |
| Cu Chi Tunnels | Half or full day | The city's other classic day trip, a completely different history |
| Ho Chi Minh City itself | Half a day, any day | War Remnants Museum, the old Post Office, Bến Thành Market |
| A multi-day Mekong extension | 2–3 days, if time allows | Cần Thơ's floating markets are a different, further-south trip |
Give the delta its own day
At roughly nine hours door to door, the Mekong Delta day trip is a genuine full day rather than something to combine with much else on the same date. The sensible way to build a Ho Chi Minh City itinerary around it is to treat it as one full slot, ideally with a lighter day either side — an early pickup and a late-afternoon or early-evening return leave limited appetite for much beyond dinner nearby that night.
The Cu Chi Tunnels are the city's other classic day trip
Ho Chi Minh City's other well-known excursion, the Cu Chi Tunnels, runs northwest of the city rather than south into the delta, and covers a completely different subject — the underground tunnel network used during the Vietnam War, rather than the delta's rivers and orchards. Some operators sell a combined Cu Chi Tunnels and Mekong Delta day, but doing both properly in one day compresses each significantly; splitting them across two separate days generally gives a fuller version of both.
Ho Chi Minh City itself, in smaller pieces
The city's own major sights — the War Remnants Museum, the Reunification Palace, the old Central Post Office, and the stalls of Bến Thành Market — fit comfortably into half-day pieces around bigger excursions like this one, rather than needing a dedicated day of their own. It's a natural way to fill an arrival day, a departure morning, or the evening after a long Mekong Delta day, without needing an early start.
Cần Thơ and the floating markets, as a separate trip
Travellers who specifically want to see the Mekong Delta's well-known floating markets should know that Cần Thơ, where the biggest of them (Cái Răng) operates, sits further south than Mỹ Tho and Bến Tre and is typically visited as its own overnight or multi-day trip rather than a single long day from Ho Chi Minh City. Treating this Mỹ Tho–Bến Tre day trip and a separate Cần Thơ visit as two different parts of a Mekong Delta itinerary, rather than expecting one to cover the other, sets a more accurate expectation. The two routes don't overlap in what they show — orchards and candy workshops here, boats trading produce to each other at dawn there — so neither one substitutes for the other.
Spacing the long days out
If the Mekong Delta day trip is one of several full-day excursions on a Ho Chi Minh City itinerary — alongside the Cu Chi Tunnels, say, or a side trip further afield — spacing them rather than stacking them back to back tends to make for a more enjoyable trip overall. Both of the city's classic day trips start early and run long in their own way, and a genuinely easy day with no fixed pickup time between two big ones is worth building in deliberately.
What to do the evening you get back
After a nine-hour day that starts before 8am, most travellers are better served by something low-key nearby than another ambitious outing — a walk through District 1's night market stalls, a rooftop bar, or simply dinner within walking distance of wherever the coach drops you. The delta's own pace, slow canals and long orchard walks, tends to carry over into the evening whether you plan for it or not.
If you have more than a couple of days
Ho Chi Minh City works well as a base for two distinct full-day trips — this Mekong Delta route south, and the Cu Chi Tunnels northwest — with a day of the city itself in between or on either end, which is enough to cover the region's headline sights without rushing any one of them. Travellers with a week or more sometimes add an onward leg further south into the delta, toward Cần Thơ, or fly on to the coast or the central highlands; none of that changes what this particular day trip covers, but it's worth deciding early which of those extensions, if any, you actually want time for.