The Ultimate Guide To Mekong River Cruises

The Mekong, the ‘mother’ river of Southeast Asia, flows 2,703 miles from China’s Qinghai down to Vietnam, dividing into nine mouths, Nine Dragons, or Cuu Long, as Vietnamese call their rivers, and emptying into the East Sea (South China Sea). 

Intimately connected to the region’s staple crop, rice, Cambodia’s Tonlé Sap (Great Lake), drained by a tributary of the Mekong River, enabled the rice surplus that fed the craftsmen of Angkor’s empire. As Vietnam’s ‘rice bowl,’ can you believe it yields more than half of the country’s harvest for this 100 million-strong communist nation? 

In this land, you’ll find ancient kingdoms, Buddhist lore and architecture, minority communities, Christian strongholds, and an unshakeable belief in the spirit world. 

Although your journey is slow and relaxed, plenty of excursions are available each day to dig a little deeper into the Mekong’s history and culture. While your downtime can be spent dipping in pools on deck, watching river life go by, and tucking into delicious Southeast Asian cuisine — think lots of fish, coconut milk, herbs, and spices.

This vast area, 15,600 square miles in the Vietnam Delta alone, is quite complicated to visit. This is because it’s not all connected by highways or waterways, but new bridges in the last 20 years have done a lot to improve access.

Much of the area is isolated and very rural — so why spend hours on busy roads to reach a temple or village when you can cruise there in style and take in floating markets, stilted homes, and Buddhist pagoda views all the way? There is really no other way to do it.

Your downtime is spent in comfort, and when you arrive at ports, having soaked up the views or dined on luscious tropical dishes along the way, you’re already on the water for those waterborne highlights — or the spots you’ll visit are a short minibus, walk or bicycle rickshaw ride away.

The Mekong is the true beating heart of the region and its lifeline. Being on the water is the only way to really take in its mighty magnitude, alternating scenery of bustle and calm, and its warm, spirited people.

The best time to cruise along the Mekong River is from November to March, when the weather is hot but, more importantly, not humid. From April, the rains begin, and the humidity ramps up.

Ho Chi Minh City is the gateway to Vietnam’s delta — still called the sing-song Saigon by locals, it’s Vietnam’s economic powerhouse. You’ll find the streets humming with millions of motorbikes and twinkling with fairy lights as towering skyscrapers dwarf remnants of pretty French colonial villas. Here, you can visit its ornate temples, museums that tell of war history, coffee havens, sexy rooftop bars, and sample fantastic, tasty cuisine.

But don’t be fooled; Ho Chi Minh City is a busy port, and its riverfront isn’t as leisure-focused as you might think.

Ben Tre is a busy riverside town of boat traffic and motorbikes that rarely features on tourist itineraries. Away from the bustle, its locals farm, fish, refine sugar, and do a roaring trade in coconuts under the palm trees. Meet locals at work at a mushroom or tropical fruit farm and chat with bee farmers while tasting the local honey. You’ll also have fun meeting the locals who are putting coconut to use at candy-making workshops.

Just north of Cai Be is a beautiful French home with celadon-green louver shutters and mustard-yellow chequerboard tiles. Take a short sampan ride to this villa, now Le Longanier Restaurant (sitting in a jungle garden), where you’ll sip green tea while listening to a traditional zither and two-stringed fiddle performance.

On reaching Cai Be town, dominated by a Catholic church spire, board a sampan (a flat-bottomed wooden boat) and visit locals, who often wear traditional Vietnamese conical hats, making coconut candies and rice paper, one of many cottage industries in the region — the latter is fascinating to watch for the process and its speed.

A stroll leads you to Ba Kiet Old House, built in 1838, surrounded by potted palms and bonsai. Inside is impressive, where you’ll be surrounded by over 100 rosewood and ironwood columns, wooden carvings with gilded lacquer, and exquisite mother-of-pearl inlays on the walls and furniture.

The charming frangipani-perfumed market town Sa Dec is known for its flower and bonsai cultivation and as the birthplace of French writer Marguerite Duras, who wrote The Lover, an autobiographical novel about an illicit romance between a French teenager and a Chinese-Vietnamese businessman (later made into a movie). 

Huynh Thuy Le was Duras’ lover. Stroll to his home on the riverfront and take green tea in the building, built in 1895. It’s decorated with gold-leaf carved animal figures such as phoenixes and a shrine dedicated to a Chinese warrior. 

You’ll later visit the prominent twin-towered Cao Dai Temple and learn about Cao Daism, a 100-year-old religion founded in southern Vietnam. Followers worship a pantheon of saints, including Buddha, Jesus, Victor Hugo, Winston Churchill, and Joan of Arc. 

North, upriver, is riverside My An Hung village where locals grow red hot chili peppers. Here, you can cross a bridge made from bamboo, known locally as a monkey bridge, and meet and greet villagers. They’ll sing and dance for you and share local garden fruits, including the delicious dragon fruit – spiky and neon pink on the outside, white-fleshed inside. 

On this small river island, chat with mango farmers, boat builders, and incense makers. You’ll take green tea and sample coconut sweets at a candy workshop in this idyllic spot, with free-roaming chickens under the shade of banana plants and fruit trees. Close by is the Tram Chim (also known as Tram Nong) bird sanctuary. Fingers crossed, you’ll spy the tallest flying bird in the world, the red-headed (sarus) crane, which makes its home on the reed plains.

The gobstopper-sized Mac Nua fruit grows around riverside Tan Chau, where locals pulp the fruit from which drains a yellow dye. Sheets of silk are dipped in the dye and dried 100 times before being pounded with woodblocks. What emerges is a lustrous and rare black silk. You’ll see the huge sheets drying in rice paddies walking through the village; they’re so large and so dark you can see them sun drying on Google Earth.

Vietnam’s war devastated the silk industry, but a French entrepreneur revived the looms and began importing silk to Europe. Today, Tan Chau’s black silk gowns are worn by Hollywood stars. You’ll arrive by bicycle trishaw and watch the process before being invited to try your skills on a weaving loom. Later, visit a rattan mat workshop, a Cao Dai Temple, and a fish farm.

Chau Doc is a bustling riverside border town on the west bank of the Hau (or Bassac) River on the Vietnam–Cambodia border. The town belonged to Cambodia until the mid-18th century and still supports a large Khmer population. Wander the market – stuffed with fruits and veg such as longan, guava, corn, and shallots and bowls filled with live fish, eels, and frogs before taking a xe loi (motorized rickshaw) to visit Chau Doc’s Cao Dai temple. 

Beyond the town is the ornately decorated Buddhist Tay An Temple at the foot of one of the holiest sites in Vietnam, Sam Mountain. Not quite a mountain, but a large hill, it’s carpeted in multi-colored, tiered temples, tombs, and sanctuaries. It is considered by wealthy Vietnamese and Chinese as a choice of last resting place. 

Tay An Temple is graced by giant elephant statues. You’ll see dozens of statues and tombs on the grounds and be dazzled by the architecture – a blend of Chinese and Islamic features. Back by the river, explore a Mekong fish farm, too, where you’ll see thousands of carp, catfish, and mullet in vast cages beneath fish farmers’ wooden homes.

A trip to Tra Su Bird Sanctuary offers an immersion into peaceful nature. Board a narrow sampan and head into small channels of the waterlogged paperbark forest where branches arc over your head. Spot storks, egrets, and jacana birds with their russet-red bodies and baby blue foreheads as you’re paddled through water, covered in bright green cress-like duckweed.     

Once a laid-back riverside city, Cambodia’s capital, Phnom Penh, is now on the rise. And as its colossal skyscrapers come into view on your river ship, it’s a bit of a shock after the slower, smaller ports of call in Vietnam.

You’ll discover chic garden restaurants and speakeasy cocktail bars in Phnom Penh jostling with Buddhist temples and French colonial architecture, plus a new-found dynamism and economic revival, too — where saffron-robed monks walk amid the increasing traffic.

Take a Khmer cooking class, first by visiting a local market and then under the guidance of a chef who’ll unlock the secrets of Khmer cooking at a fine dining restaurant. Or, take a craft beer tour of the capital. Alternatively, visit Kho Chen, a village where most locals are dedicated to the art of silver making. Bring your purses to buy bowls, jewelry, and silver boxes.

Explore the French-built Royal Palace of Cambodia with its spires and the Silver Pagoda, where you’ll be dazzled by the marble floor lined with 5,000 silver blocks and an emerald Buddha statue made by the luxury French house, Baccarat. Then, pick up your own silverware and jewels at the Central Market.

More sobering is the Tuol Sleng Museum, where the horrific facts of the Khmer Rouge genocide are on display. Choeung Ek, also known as the ‘killing fields,’ is a visceral reminder of the up to three million Cambodians who were murdered by the regime from 1976-1978.

Begin your visit by taking a traditional ride on an ox cart to a local temple at Kampong Tralach before continuing by road to Oudong, west of the Tonlé Sap River. Once the capital and royal residence of kings for 250 years, Oudong offers a glimpse into Cambodia’s past.

It’s dominated by a hill, Phnom Oudong, covered in stupas, the burial sites of the ancient Khmer kings. Steps lead to the summit of the forested hill, with panoramic views of the pancake-flat landscape. One of the stupas is said to house a relic of the Buddha. On your visit to the mountain, you’ll be accompanied by dozens of locals coming to pay their respects, too.

Oknhatey, or Oknha Tey, is a Mekong River island just north of Phnom Penh. Escape the city bustle for a while to explore the tranquil island known for its silk-weaving tradition. On this trip, you’ll glimpse the weavers’ world of silkworms, spinning, dyeing with various colors, and weaving. Many weavers also set up looms underneath their homes on stilts, and you can buy gifts to take home afterward.

Another Mekong River island, Koh Dach, lies north of Oknhatey and is known as ‘Silk Island.’ Women weave on looms and are dedicated to creating sarong skirts (sampot) and, in particular, sampot chang kben clothes, which are traditionally worn by women and men during weddings. You’ll watch weavers at looms and be able to buy their work from the small home studios.

Angkor Ban is a small village on the banks of the Mekong, northeast of Phnom Penh. A highlight is a trip to a village school where you’ll watch the teacher chalk up English words on a blackboard and take part in the English class for local children. At Angkor Ban, there’s also an opportunity to meet Buddhist monks and take part in almsgiving, where you’ll offer cooked rice in bowls for the monks to collect for their daily food.

Kampong Cham is a riverside town with a wet market (selling fresh fish, meats, fruit and veg) and a good collection of attractive Chinese shophouses. It’s home, too, to a large community of Cham people who follow Islam.

Around town are rubber tree plantations. See tree trunks oozing rubber sap and watch how the sap is collected. Learn about the russet-red watchtower on the opposite bank of the town where French colonialists would observe plantation activity in the early 20th century, too.

Koh Pen island used to be linked by the world’s longest bamboo bridge measuring one kilometer long. A concrete bridge replaced it, but since then, the locals have made a smaller, pedestrian-only bamboo bridge for visitors to walk to their island.

You’ll walk among homes on stilts shaded by sprigs of bougainvillea and farmers tending neon-green paddy fields. Some villagers grow areca palms for their betel nut, and you’ll see locals (especially the older generation) with blackened mouths. Here, you’ll learn why locals chew on the nut, a long-standing regional tradition.

Wat Banteay Prey Nokor is a 13th-century temple complex built of sandstone and laterite with a surprising jewel inside. Wander through the ancient, wonky complex (almost like a film set) and emerge into a more modern temple built within. It’s slightly psychedelic, with columns painted with dragons (symbols of wisdom in Buddhist lore), colorful walls and ceilings, and imagery depicting scenes from the Buddha’s life.

Just beyond Wat Nokor is the mountain and temple Phnom Pros (Man’s Hill), opposite its larger twin, Phnom Srey (Woman’s Hill), both sites of Buddhist pilgrimage. You’ll be driven to the top of Phnom Pros and learn about the legend of how the hills got their name.

Phnom Pros is dominated by a peaked temple, two pagodas, and a giant Buddha statue. The hill has a bleak history, too, as a location for torture during Cambodia’s genocide. See sweeping views of the countryside and the Mekong, and watch out for the monkeys who live on the hill. You’ll meet novice monks and take part in almsgiving, too.

En route by road to Siem Reap, the gateway city to Angkor Wat, stop to admire the impressive Kampong Kdei Bridge, an ancient bridge built from laterite, lined with a sandstone balustrade, and bookended by carved ornamental naga, a mythical dragon-serpent and protector of the earth. 

The bridge has been restored over the years and is held in high regard, so much so that it features on Cambodia’s 5,000-riel banknote. Before reaching Siem Reap, you’ll stop at a stone cutters’ village. You’ll know you’ve arrived as the main road is lined with giant statues — mainly of Buddhas in different mudras (gestures). Here, you can watch a couple of the woodcarvers at work. 

Siem Reap is a city bustling with tuk-tuks, craft markets, restaurants serving wonderful food such as the local specialty amok, a spicy curry made with white fish in coconut milk, and street stalls selling spicy hot mango salad and spicy noodles with curry and veg and layered with pork meat. 

From your hotel, venture out to Siem Reap’s Phare Circus big top where performers create a thrilling experience rooted in social responsibility, circus with purpose. Senteurs d’Ankor, an enterprise focussing on empowering women, offers an immersive experience where local artisans will share how they make soaps from coconut oil and natural cosmetics in their attractive frangipani-scented grounds.  

North of the city is the Banteay Srei Temple and the educational Landmine Museum, set up by an ex-child soldier, Aki Ra. Banteay Srei is an intricately carved Khmer temple dedicated to the Hindu gods Shiva and Parvati. It is considered one of Cambodia’s finest examples of Angkorian craftsmanship. 

Before visiting Angkor Wat, a Hindu-Buddhist temple complex, get a superb glimpse from above (800 meters distant) in a tethered hot air balloon. Nothing can prepare you for wandering into Angkor Wat itself, the largest religious complex in the world, with walls made from one of the longest bas-reliefs found on earth. 

The cities are tremendous highlights and Angkor Wat and Banteay Srei Temple will serve up memories for a lifetime. Still, it’s the more tranquil spots, such as the Sa Dec riverfront, and time spent with the silk makers, weavers, rice paper creators, citrus and tropical fruit farmers, and candy makers that will create lasting memories. 

AmaDara is AmaWaterways’ Mekong ship with 62 Staterooms, attended to by 52 crew members, massage rooms, a fitness room, a gift shop, a hair salon, and a sundeck pool, across three decks. Staterooms are decorated in French colonial style with richly carved wood, a French balcony, and an outside balcony. Onboard, you can choose between the Main Restaurant and The Chef’s Table for dining — while The Saigon Lounge seFrved is for tickling cocktails. In 2026, AmaWaterways will welcome a second Mekong ship, AmaMaya. 

Scenic Spirit hosts up to 68 passengers with an almost 1:1 staff-to-guest ratio. The three-deck ship is home to 34 suites – royal panorama, grand deluxe, and deluxe – all decorated in a sleek, minimalist style. Royal suites come with a bonus of an alfresco balcony jacuzzi. In addition to the appealing all-day River Café, you’ll enjoy a la carte meals at Crystal Dining and a Chef’s Table treat. 

Emerald Harmony is a modern three-deck ship with 42 cabins attended by 40 crew members — from the owner’s one-bedroom suite to the grand balcony suite, Emerald Panorama balcony suite, and Emerald stateroom. Guests are treated to fine dining in the Reflections restaurant and champagne in the relaxed Lotus Lounge, pool bar, or Horizon Bar.

• Come with an open mind. The Vietnamese and Cambodians both eat fried insects like crickets, for example. These are delicious, washed down with a local beer. 
• Purchase a local handicraft or souvenir to support local economies.
• Don’t be persuaded to buy durian fruit and bring it back on board. This fruit has a stinky reputation – so bad it’s prohibited to transport it on airlines. 
• The weather is hot, and increasingly so, as the months edge towards April. Bring light, cotton or linen clothing, and a sun hat. 
• You’ll do a fair bit of walking, so bring comfortable trainers or heavy-duty sandals.