A panoramic view of a floating market in the Mekong Delta, where vendors and buyers engage in a flurry of activities daily.

Drifting on narrow waterways under shades of coconut trees, tourists will discover that the rivulets and canals teem with life – from the bustling floating markets to locals harvesting paddies and raising bees.

The Mekong Delta, long considered Vietnam’s rice basket, encompasses 13 southern provinces and the starting point of the tour for most visitors begins in Ho Chi Minh City. After traveling around 80 kilometers southwestward, visitors will arrive at the town of My Tho and get on boats or canoes to continue their journey exploring the matrix of waterways that weave through the region.

Most tours offer visits to the four islets – Long, Lan, Quy, Phung – resembling the four mythical creatures honored by the Chinese and Vietnamese.

Located about a 30-minute boat ride from My Tho Town, Phung Island is the place where the late monk Ong Dao Dua purportedly spent three years in meditation, surviving solely off of coconuts.

Meanwhile, the tiny area of Thoi Son, also known as Lan Island, hosts a community of some 6,000 residents and has been recently developed into an attractive destination.

This ecotourism village covering only 10 square meters features areas for aquatic sports, camping and handicraft-making.

Nguyen Van Quoc, from the Tien River Tourism Center in Tien Giang Province, said Thoi Son is considered the “focus” of all the tours the agency offer.

“We want Thoi Son to uplift visitors after having traveled the long road from HCMC to Tien Giang,” Quoc said. “We want to incorporate the unique environmental settings and locals’ routines into our tours.”

Visitors get a glimpse of southerners’ lives through visiting local homes, orchards and fish-raising grounds, and sampling tea flavored with honey.

A Japanese tourist named Keiko marveled at the green waterways that border many village roads in the Mekong Delta and the flurry of activities that occur daily on these channels.

“I am really impressed with residents carrying loads of goods on their backs and scampering dexterously back and forth across skinny bamboo bridges,” she said.

In the southern province of Can Tho, visitors can stop by at the Cai Rang floating market, where droves of hawkers and vendors make circles with their boats pitching sales.

Another tourist named Nick said he has visited Vietnam’s Mekong Delta twice and enthusiastically recommends the exotic dishes the region has on tap.

“I absolutely adore the fried fish wrapped in lotus’ leaves, dipped in tamarind soy sauce,” he said.

Tourism challenges

But experts in the tourism industry say inadequate infrastructure systems and the lack of environmental protection measures are among the main reasons why the region is still underdeveloped in terms of attracting visitors.

In an online forum discussing the potential of promoting tourism in the Mekong Delta, Vo Hung Dung, director of the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry in Can Tho, said a foreign tourist only visits the region for one day on average.

It is estimated that of the 1.5 million international tourists who came to HCMC in the first six months of this year, around 110,000 split off to go see Can Tho City compared to 420,000 and 315,000 visitors for the central towns of Hue city and Hoi An.

A major deterrent to visiting the Mekong Delta are inconvenience. Nine provinces among the 13 that constitute the region are connected by a single highway, National Highway 1A, that runs straight through without any alternative roads that would make commuting between the provinces easier.

For example, tourists must travel 300 kilometers from Bac Lieu Province through Soc Trang and Can Tho before reaching Kien Giang Province, while that distance could be reduced to 100 kilometers if there were a sectional highway.

Littering has also become a major issue, as many tourists have complained of trash being dumped into the river – enough rubbish to transform the scenic floating markets into a gathering place for bobbing fruit peels.

“Guests are seriously disturbed after seeing so much litter contaminating rivers and canals,” said Le Thanh Quy, director of the Saigon-Can Tho Hotel. “They wouldn’t be so excited about returning after wading through such wastes in their canoes.”

Ernst Sagemueller, general director of the European-Indochina Institute for Tourism in HCMC, said the key to developing tourism in the Mekong Delta has to do with protecting the environment rather than building resorts, casinos, or cable car systems across the rivers.

It’s all about preserving the environment the way it is, he said.

Reported by Hoang Thai