Published on November 29, 2017
Phnom Penh Riverside. Image © Mild Delirium/Creative Commons.
What You’ll Get
An eight-day, seven-night deluxe cruise soaking up the local color while sailing up the Mekong River, from Ho Chi Minh City in Viet Nam to Siem Reap in Cambodia.
Highlights
The Mekong is one of Southeast Asia’s most important rivers, and with this tour you’ll be able to see its power for yourself.
Start at the luxury river cruiser Toum Tiou, your home for the next eight days in the Mekong, docked at Ho Chi Minh City in Viet Nam. Leave the rush of the city in the evening – the next day, you’ll drop anchor at My Tho and Cai Be, and take in the beauty of the delta with a tour of fruit orchards, verdant gardens and rice fields, and floating markets.
The next day, you get a glimpse of a charming colonial town in Sa Dec with its villas and vibrant flower markets, before you find yourself in the friendly and technicolor town of Chau Doc, where you’ll see fish raising rafts and brightly colored shopfronts.
Upon arrival in Cambodia, you can explore the capital of Phnom Penh at leisure, before taking in its significant sights—the Royal Palace, Silver Pagoda, National Museum, Wat Phnom, and Toul Sleng. You will also visit Kampong Tralach where an isolated Buddhist monastery hides some remarkable mural paintings.
Further upstream, you’ll visit Kampong Chnang, one of the largest fishing ports on the Tonlé Sap which connects to the Mekong river; and Chnok Tru, a remote yet self-sufficient floating village, where everyone goes by boat through the network of canals that cross the town; before retiring to Siem Reap’s elegant FCC Angkor Hotel – the rooms open to the pool, in case you suddenly miss being so near the water!
Floating villages, Tonle Sap. Image © Al and Marie/Creative Commons.