My Tho Boat Trip
Southwest of Ho Chi Minh City, buses emerge from the city’s unkempt urban sprawl and into the pastoral surrounds of the Mekong Delta’s upper plains. The delta is too modest to flaunt its full beauty so soon, but glimpses of rice fields hint at things to come, their burnished golds and brilliant greens interspersed with the occasional white ancestral grave. Seventy kilometres out of Ho Chi Minh City lies MY THO, an amiable market town that nestles on the north bank of the Mekong River’s northernmost strand, the Tien Giang, or Upper River.
About the Mekong Delta Town of My Tho in Vietnam and also a visit to the totally beautiful Vinh Trang Pagoda.
The Vietnamese town of My Tho is 45 miles (72kms) southwest of Ho Chi Minh City within the Mekong Delta. My Tho is one of the most
My Tho – Local Market
popular destination for Vietnamese day trips from Saigon. Tourists arrive early on coaches from Ho Chi Minh City, get straight onto boats for the trips out to the Mekong River’s islands for a few hours and then get back on their coaches and whiz off back to Saigon. They therefore sadly do not see anything of this really nice Vietnamese town – My Tho has far more to offer than just it’s boat trips and makes a very pleasant place to stay for a few days holiday.
The photo on the right is of the beautiful Vinh Trang Pagoda. If anywhere remotely near My Tho whilst touring Vietnam you really have to go and see this Pagoda – it’s fantastic.
My Tho’s proximity to Ho Chi Minh City means that it receives the lion’s share of day-trippers to the delta, resulting in a scrum of pushy vendors crowding round each tour bus that arrives. Nevertheless, the town comes as a great relief after the onslaught of Ho Chi Minh City, its uncrowded boulevards belying a population of around 220,000, and you can easily escape the melee by hopping onto a boat or wandering into the backstreets.
