What Is the Ho Chi Minh City to Phnom Penh Boat Tour? The Full 3-Day Itinerary
Day 1: Mekong Delta by Boat – Mangroves, Villages, and Exotic Tastings
About ten of us set off from Ho Chi Minh City together on a large boat. The Mekong scenery is genuinely pretty, and being on the water from the start sets the right tone for the trip.
At some point, we transferred to smaller boats to explore narrower waterways feeding into the Mekong and passed through a section of mangrove. It’s muddy and not dramatic, but it has a quiet, natural appeal that’s hard to find close to a major city.
Later, we stopped at a local river village with market-style stalls selling regional products. The most memorable items were small bottles containing scorpions or spiders preserved in what appeared to be medicinal alcohol.
A bit unsettling, but fascinating. I’d seen something similar in a fishing village in northern Vietnam while doing the Lan Ha bay boat tour, the hidden cousin of the Ha Long bay, where locals made their own spirits with snakes inside for flavor and supposed medicinal properties. Finding this tradition again in the south felt like a genuine cultural connection.
We also visited beehives and tasted honey and pollen, which were sold at good prices.
The day ended with a traditional dance performance and a fruit tasting: dragon fruit in both white and pink varieties (I prefer the pink, which has more flavor), durian, and lychee.
We slept at Can Tho, a cute small city. Dinner that evening was not included in the tour, so I went out alone and found a cheap riverside restaurant. The area had a relaxed, local feel and the meal cost almost nothing.
Day 2: Lychee Farms, Flooded Forests, and Buddhist Temples Near the Border
Day two involved more driving than day one, heading toward the border zone by car through flat farmland and rice fields. The landscape is agricultural and wide open.
The morning started at a lychee farm. We tasted several varieties with different flavor profiles: some tart, some sweeter. It lasted about an hour and was genuinely interesting rather than just a tourist checkbox.
After the farm, we boarded boats for a visit to a flooded forest, the Tra Su cajuput forest in An Giang province.
The experience came in two parts. First, a motor boat tour of about 20 to 30 minutes that gave a broad view of the forest and its waterways. Then we switched to a rowing boat for another 20 to 30 minutes through narrower channels where the engine noise wouldn’t scare the wildlife.
We saw several bird species up close, and it was genuinely peaceful.
What struck me most was how few people were around. I saw no other tourists during the rowing section at all. Traveling in November may have played a role in that.
The afternoon brought two temple visits in Tinh Bien, one Chinese temple and one Buddhist temple. Both were beautiful.
From one of the elevated temples, you could see Cambodia directly across the border. Our guide spoke about the historically tense relationship between Vietnam and Cambodia, which added some real context to what we were about to do the next day.
That evening, the whole group had dinner together in the city where we spent the night before the border crossing.
Day 3: Speed Boat to the Border and Onward to Phnom Penh
An early start was required. The boat on day three was not the same leisurely vessel as day one. It was a speed boat with around 50 to 70 passengers from multiple tour groups. This is where you say goodbye to your guide and driver.
After about 40 minutes on the water, we reached the Vietnamese border post, which sits on the river itself.
The crew are handling everything, whichis good and scary as you give them your passport and just have to wait.
From there, all passangers needs to get of the boat and wait until the passport are stamped. It can take some times because we’re not the only speedboat.
We do then a five minutes of river crossing later, we were on the Cambodian side.
The immigration compound was on land, enclosed, and required filling out a form that we’d been given on the boat.
A big notice here, you need 35$ in cash for the Cambodian visa. So be sure to have them before boarding the speedboat.
Once stamped, everyone reboarded for three to five hours of river navigation to Phnom Penh, arriving around 3 to 4 PM.
