We’re holed up in My Tho, a city that sits like a front-row seat to the Mekong’s great performance. The river here doesn’t just flow—it sprawls, splits, and scatters into a thousand little islands, as if it couldn’t quite decide on a direction and eventually gave up trying. Brown and busy, it carries everything with it: boats, bananas, gossip, and the faint sense that it’s been doing this long before anyone thought to name it.

Each island feels like its own tiny kingdom. Coconuts hang low and heavy, bananas bunch in optimistic clusters, and durians lurk like spiked medieval weapons, daring you to get too close. Farmers move through it all with the calm efficiency of people who have accepted that sweating is not a problem to be solved, just a condition of existence.

Our hotel arranged us a motorbike for the day. It cost £6, which is about 40,000 VND more than the last place. I could see Craig almost decline on principle, mentally converting currencies and drawing a firm moral line, until the calculation completed and he realised it was only £1. At that point, the decision was waved through without further scrutiny.

Craig, unflappable as ever, took the controls with the serene focus of a man buttering toast. I climbed on the back like a Victorian invalid being transported to the seaside for my health. Traffic surged: scooters threading impossible gaps, buses leaning in with casual menace, chickens making last-minute life choices. To complete the look, I’d been issued an oversized helmet that slowly rotated off-centre, pulling my head to one side like a confused pigeon auditioning for a road safety PSA.

We set off weaving on and off the islands by way of the connecting bridges—no boats, no life jackets, just concrete spans rising out of the brown water and dropping us straight into another version of rural life. One minute we were in traffic, the next in orchards, then back again, the Mekong slipping underneath us almost unnoticed.

We passed the Mekong cruise terminal—glossy, glassy, and suspiciously quiet. It looked plush enough to host a Bond villain’s farewell party, but instead sat there echoing and empty, like a nightclub at 10am.

Then came the suspension bridge, lifting us high above the water. Below, tourists bobbed along in little wooden boats, clutching hats, bags, and guides with equal intensity. From above they looked both delighted and faintly horrified, as though they’d signed up for adventure but hadn’t read the small print.

Long Son Island: Where the Day Slows

Long Son Island was where the day properly slowed. The hems—Vietnam’s answer to alleyways—are part shortcut, part social experiment, and always guaranteed to contain at least one barking dog. They pulled us away from the main road and into something more intimate. Houses sat open to the heat, hammocks strung across doorways, fans doing their best against the afternoon.

Baby brown cows stood tethered with a look of mild surprise, blinking at the world as if unsure how they’d ended up responsible for it. Chickens scattered and regrouped, gravestones appeared unceremoniously in fields beside banana trees, and life seemed arranged without much concern for zoning laws or future planners.

Farmers worked coconut and durian plots by hand, moving steadily rather than quickly, while dogs barked down the hems announcing our arrival with all the urgency of a town crier. It felt lived-in rather than staged—not something being shown to us, just something we happened to pass through.

The air smelled green and damp, with an undercurrent of mud and fruit. It was busy, but unhurried, and for a while we forgot entirely about distances, time, or what we were supposed to be doing next.

Brunch was suitably glamorous: apple and pomelo, eaten on a concrete bench beside a garage. No menus, no chairs, and no sign of a Michelin inspector within several provinces. The fruit was sharp and sweet, juice running down our hands, and the occasional waft of petrol fumes added a note of industrial chic.

Ben Tre: Markets, Mischief, and a Tactical Retreat

Crossing into Ben Tre felt like tumbling into organised chaos. The market was enormous—sprawling, noisy, and apparently stocked by every household in the province emptying their cupboards at once. Pyramids of fruit, sacks of rice, buckets of something that had once been alive, and the constant choreography of sellers, buyers, scooters, and the deeply confused.

We ducked into Viên Minh Pagoda—closed, of course—then promptly ignored that and slipped in through a side entrance like naughty schoolchildren who had spotted unattended biscuits. It was quiet inside, the kind of quiet that presses gently on your shoulders, before reality reasserted itself in the form of my “jolley restroom” episode. I emerged hot, shaken, and roughly two stone lighter, while Craig waited with the sympathetic patience of a man who knows the true meaning of vows.

The Mekong, however, had other ideas. A sudden and decisive tummy intervention meant we had to cut the trip short and turn back towards My Tho earlier than planned.

The early return meant a stop at the bakery, where Craig emerged triumphantly with five freshly baked loaves—warm, crusty, and held like a trophy. I was in no state to argue logistics or storage plans. Some victories, you simply allow.

The River Doing the Work

Running alongside all of this—sometimes visible, sometimes just implied—is the Tiền River, one of the Mekong’s main arteries. Here, water isn’t scenery. It’s infrastructure.

The canals do the heavy lifting. Boats replace buses, sampans stand in for scooters, and everything that matters arrives by water first and paperwork second. Fruit, coconuts, rice, fish, building materials—all of it moves quietly past kitchens that lean over the canals and houses that back straight onto them. Children grow up with the casual aquatic competence of ducks, and nobody seems especially impressed by it.

Historically, these canals were dug and expanded to drain swampland and move goods, which neatly explains how the Mekong Delta became Vietnam’s rice bowl. The logic still holds. Life here flows, literally, along brown water.

Evening: Pizza, Peace, and Five Spice Avoidance

By evening, we’d run out of steam. The Mekong had had its say, and my stomach was still filing formal complaints. We finished the day on the most culturally sensitive note possible: a trip to Domino’s.

This was very much for Craig. A treat—and, more importantly, a break from five spice, which is significantly more pungent here. It hangs in the air, clings to clothes, and seems capable of following you home. Pizza offered sanctuary.

The Domino’s sits in the posh bit of My Tho, all glass, air-conditioning, and aspirational lighting. Inside, it felt faintly like we’d stepped into a small international agreement—the Mekong outside doing what it’s always done, while inside people debated crust thickness and dipping sauces.

Craig ate happily. I recovered. The five spice was held at bay. And outside, the Mekong kept flowing, unimpressed by our crust debates, carrying on as it always has.