Mekong Delta

The 16,000 square miles of the Mekong Delta — a semi-wilderness of swamps, canals, islands and paddy fields — extend for 200 miles from the outskirts of Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) southwest to the Cambodian border. During the Vietnam War, it was a place of incessant conflict between Viet Cong guerrillas and men aboard the speedboats and helicopter gunships of the U.S. Navy and Marines. Today the delta is serene once more, a shimmering landscape, decked out in a thousand shades of green, where farmers can harvest three rice crops a year from the rich alluvial soil brought by the great river from the foothills of the Himalayas. 

Its capital is Can Tho, a colorful city of around 1.2 million inhabitants, situated on the Hau River, one of the nine major channels into which the Mekong River divides. Traditionally, Can Tho was the delta’s entrepôt, and even now it is famous for its floating markets, where farmers from far afield bring their agricultural produce — pineapples, melons, garlic, radishes — to sell or exchange. The city is also well-known for its restaurants and food stalls, as well as for cacao plantations on its outskirts, from the cocoa beans of which the Vietnamese make delicious chocolate, a product that is a benign legacy of French colonialism.