Business Traveller (Asia-Pacific)
Vietnam’s Mekong Delta is a timeless, watery world where luxurious French colonial hotels sit serenely in a lush landscape
The Mekong Delta is an evocative time warp, writes Jeremy Tredinnick
Emerging into the arrivals hall of Tan Son Nhat International Airport for the first time in more than a decade, I see my name on a board and look up to the beaming smile of a be-suited driver, who escorts me to a gleaming Mercedes-Benz. I pass in luxurious, air-conditioned comfort through Ho Chi Minh City. The modern world has swept Vietnam into its eager embrace; Japanese cars and mopeds now outnumber bicycles ten to one, computer shops and high-rises sprout throughout the city… but the familiar chaos of interweaving vehicles and pedestrians remains.
We head south towards my destination, deep in the heart of the Mekong Delta. Outside the city an age-old rhythm is once again apparent; the roads are newer and better maintained, but the flanking fruit stalls, the expansive green fields, the regular rise and fall as we arc over rivers or canals on sturdy bridges, glimpsing hand-rowed longboats and bulky rice barges – these are quintessential Delta images that will never disappear.
This region is Vietnam’s rice basket. Its eponymous benefactor is the Mekong Song Cuu Long –“the River of Nine Dragons” as the Vietnamese call it, because by the time it has entered the country after its long journey from the Tibetan Plateau it has split into two main waterways: the Hau Giang, or Lower River, also called the Bassac, and the Tien Giang, or Upper River, which empties into the South China Sea at five points.
After a 30-minute vehicular ferry ride to cross the Bassac, a short drive brings us to the gravelled entrance of the Victoria Can Tho Resort. Its refined, 1930s-style French colonial architecture, colonnaded lobby and languidly turning ceiling fans place me back in a world of privilege, plantation owners and French Indochina.
The best way to visit friends and family, transport goods, in fact to do anything, is by water
It opened in 1998, by far the most luxurious hotel establishment to be found in the Mekong Delta region, offering French cuisine of the finest quality, a large, colonial bar with a pool table, spa facilities, tennis court and swimming pool – nothing quite like it had been seen in the Delta before. The Victoria group certainly showed vision in predicting that this colourful, fascinating region of southern Vietnam would become a popular destination for upmarket travellers as well as backpackers.
And why is Can Tho so popular? To find out, I book an early morning trip on the converted rice barge Lady Hau, 20 minutes of genteel sailing – coffee and croissant in hand – up the river to the famous Cai Rang Floating Market. Before dawn every day, large boats arrive from the Delta hinterland to sell produce to small-boat owners, who then paddle up the myriad narrow canals and waterways that form a vast and intricate water network around the main town, shouting out their wares to canalside households as they go.
It’s a way of life that has changed little in thousands of years – in a land where water is so all-pervading, the seasons defined by the rise and fall of the Mekong’s massive flow, the best way to visit friends and family, transport goods, in fact to do anything, is by water.
At this time of year, the boats at the floating market are full to the gunwales with sweet potatoes, cabbages, carrots and spring onions, as well as pineapples, dragonfruit, custard apples and passionfruit. It’s a cornucopia of fresh fruit and vegetables, testament to the fecundity of the alluvial soil that blankets the Delta, replenished every year when the Mekong breaks its banks and floods, leaving a new layer of rich silt each time.
I transfer to a smaller longtail boat. Chugging through the market mêlée, small boats with open kitchens pass among the buyers and sellers, providing hot noodle snacks and lunch for the industrious market-goers. The larger boats’ engines emit deep staccato belches, like