An Island Town on the Co Chien River
Vinh Long sits on the Co Chien River, one of the Mekong’s several branches as it fans out toward the sea, and it functions as a quiet counterpart to the region’s better-known river towns. Travelers coming from Ho Chi Minh City often pass through it on the way to or from Can Tho, and the two names get confused constantly — understandably, since both sit on the Mekong system and both host boat trips and homestays. They are not the same place, and the difference matters for planning a trip through the Mekong Delta.
Can Tho is the delta’s largest city, a genuine urban center with a proper riverfront, a wide choice of hotels, and the Cai Rang floating market as its signature sight. Vinh Long is smaller and more provincial. It has a modest town center, a handful of hotels and guesthouses, and its real appeal lies not in the town itself but in the river around it — the islands, the orchards, and the working brick kilns strung along the canals. Anyone arriving expecting a floating market at Vinh Long, or expecting the buzz of a delta city, has the wrong town in mind. That confusion is common enough that it’s worth stating plainly here rather than assuming it away.
The River Islands: An Binh and Binh Hoa Phuoc
The heart of a Vinh Long visit is not the town but the water around it. A short boat crossing from the Vinh Long waterfront reaches a cluster of low, flat river islands — An Binh and Binh Hoa Phuoc are the two most visited — laced with narrow canals and covered almost entirely in fruit orchards: longan, mango, rambutan, jackfruit and dragon fruit, depending on what’s in season on a given visit. The islands are worked land, not a preserved attraction, and that’s part of what distinguishes the experience from a more curated stop elsewhere in the delta.
Smaller channels between the orchards are navigable only by narrow sampan, poled or paddled rather than run by outboard motor, and a typical island visit moves between a larger tourist boat on the main river and one of these smaller craft once the itinerary turns off into the canals. For more on this particular style of boat travel, see our guide to sampan trips through the delta’s canals, which covers the same style of narrow-channel boating found here and around Cai Be and Ben Tre.
Alongside the orchards, several of the island households keep small workshops producing traditional sweets, rice paper, coconut candy or bonsai plants, and many of these same households also take in overnight guests. A Vinh Long river island is one of the more established homestay circuits in the delta — not a purpose-built resort, but a family home adapted to host travelers, usually with a shared evening meal cooked from what’s grown on the property. Anyone considering that option should read our separate guide to Mekong Delta homestays before booking, since the experience varies a great deal by household and by how much English is spoken.
The Brick Kilns of the Mang Thit Canal
The other sight distinctive to this stretch of river is industrial rather than agricultural: a line of tall, cone-shaped brick kilns along the Mang Thit canal, between Vinh Long and the neighboring town of Cai Be. The clay along these riverbanks has supported a brick and pottery trade for generations, and the kilns are still active, producing the red bricks and terracotta pieces used across the delta and beyond. Seen from a boat, the kilns form a skyline unlike anywhere else on this stretch of the Mekong — dozens of brick chimneys rising above the riverbank, some active and smoking, others cooling or standing idle between firings.
A boat trip that combines the kilns with an island stop and an orchard visit is the standard way to see Vinh Long, and it’s usually built as part of a longer loop rather than a destination on its own. Because Cai Be sits just across the water and shares much of the same landscape, the two towns are almost always visited together; our guide to a combined Cai Be and Vinh Long day lays out how that pairing typically works.
Vinh Long Town Itself
The town of Vinh Long is modest and largely functional — a provincial administrative center with a riverside promenade, a market, and a scattering of colonial-era buildings left over from the French period. It’s a reasonable place to stop for a meal or to pick up a boat, but it isn’t a sightseeing destination in the way District 1 or Cholon are in Ho Chi Minh City. Most of what draws travelers here happens on the water, not in the streets, which is another reason the town gets overshadowed in people’s minds by the livelier riverfront at Can Tho.
That said, the town’s position — roughly midway along the delta’s main road route, between the towns closer to Ho Chi Minh City and Can Tho further south — makes it a natural stopping point on a longer overland route through the delta, whether that route continues on to Sa Dec and its flower village, or further still toward Chau Doc near the Cambodian border.
Vinh Long or Can Tho: Choosing Between Them
Because the two towns are so often mentioned in the same breath, it’s worth being direct about how to choose between them, or whether a trip needs both.
| Vinh Long | Can Tho | |
|---|---|---|
| Size | Small provincial town | Delta’s largest city |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Signature sight | River islands, orchards, brick kilns | Cai Rang floating market |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Floating market | Not a major floating market | Yes — Cai Rang |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Typical stay | Day stop or island homestay | Larger choice of hotels |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Best paired with | Cai Be | Chau Doc, Soc Trang |
Travelers who have only one delta stop in their itinerary and specifically want to see a floating market should base themselves at Can Tho for the Cai Rang floating market at dawn, not at Vinh Long. Travelers who want a quieter river experience — orchards, canals, a homestay night, the brick kilns — are better served by Vinh Long, paired with Cai Be.
Many multi-day itineraries simply include both, treating Vinh Long as a stop on the way to or from Can Tho rather than a choice between the two. Our comparison of My Tho and Can Tho as delta departure points works through a related version of this same decision and is worth reading alongside this page. For the fuller question of how to structure a delta trip around these towns, see choosing a Mekong Delta departure point.
River Cruises and Longer Stays
Vinh Long and the water around it also feature in some of the delta’s multi-day river cruise itineraries, which combine a night or more aboard a boat with stops at several of the towns along this stretch of the Mekong, sometimes continuing as far as Chau Doc or across the border toward Cambodia. Anyone weighing a cruise rather than a day trip should look at our dedicated coverage of the delta’s river cruises and, for the specific route toward the border, the guide to multi-day cruises between the delta and Cambodia — both go into the detail that belongs there rather than here.
Getting to Vinh Long
Vinh Long lies on the main road route through the delta, on the way between Ho Chi Minh City and Can Tho, which means it’s rarely visited in isolation. Most travelers reach it either as a stop on an organized day tour departing from Ho Chi Minh City, as one leg of a longer overland route continuing toward Can Tho and Chau Doc, or as part of a boat-based itinerary that treats the river islands as a base for a night or two. Because the town itself has limited independent transport infrastructure compared with Can Tho, arranging transport in advance — whether a tour, a private car, or a scheduled coach — is the practical approach for most visitors rather than trying to piece together onward travel locally.
a customized private day tour from Ho Chi Minh City covering the islands and orchards around Vinh Long is the most flexible way to see the area in a single day, since the route and pace can be adjusted around what’s actually in season on the islands. For a tour built specifically around Vinh Long’s Khmer heritage sites alongside the river landscape, a premium Vinh Long tour that also explores the area’s Khmer culture covers ground that a standard orchard-and-canal itinerary skips.
Vinh Long Paired With Cai Be
Because the two towns share the same stretch of river, almost every organized itinerary treats Vinh Long and Cai Be as a single unit rather than two separate stops. a one-day Mekong Delta tour combining Cai Be and Vinh Long is the standard version of this pairing, moving by boat between the brick kilns, the orchard islands and one of the smaller floating markets that operate on this stretch of the river — distinct from Cai Rang, and much smaller in scale.
Travelers who want a more active day on the water, rather than a boat tour taken mostly seated, can look at a Mekong Delta day combining kayaking, cycling and a cooking session, which uses the same canal landscape around Vinh Long and Cai Be but adds a physical, hands-on component to the visit rather than following a fixed boat route.
Beyond Vinh Long: Sa Dec and the Wider Delta
Vinh Long rarely stands entirely alone in an itinerary. It connects naturally westward toward Sa Dec and its flower-growing villages, and further still toward Chau Doc near the border. Travelers assembling a longer loop through this part of the delta, rather than a single day trip, sometimes extend into neighboring Dong Thap province, where a cacao farm tour and tasting in Dong Thap adds an agricultural stop with a different character from the rice-and-fruit landscape immediately around Vinh Long itself.
For travelers planning how Vinh Long fits into a broader route, our two-day itinerary through Can Tho and the Cai Rang floating market and our four-day route through Can Tho and Chau Doc both pass through or near this stretch of river and show how a Vinh Long stop typically slots into a longer delta trip rather than standing as a destination on its own. For the broader things to do in the Mekong Delta, and for Cai Be specifically, things to do around Cai Be covers the neighboring town in more detail than fits here.
Multi-Day Options: Vinh Long, Can Tho and the Floating Market
Travelers who don’t want to choose between the quieter Vinh Long experience and the Cai Rang floating market at Can Tho can combine both on a single multi-day trip rather than picking one over the other. a two-day tour covering the floating markets of both Vinh Long and Can Tho spends a night in the delta so the early departure needed for a dawn market visit doesn’t have to start from Ho Chi Minh City, and it puts the Vinh Long orchards and islands on the same itinerary as the Cai Rang market that Vinh Long itself doesn’t have.
For a longer loop that adds a third stop, a three-day Mekong Delta tour taking in Ben Tre and Tra Vinh alongside Vinh Long works through coconut country at Ben Tre and the Khmer temples of Tra Vinh, both of which sit within a short distance of Vinh Long’s own river islands, before returning to Ho Chi Minh City. Our deep Mekong Delta loop and Mekong Delta two-day tour guides cover the general logistics of building a route like this — how many nights to plan, and which towns pair naturally with which.
Side Trips: Vinh Trang Pagoda and Coconut Candy Workshops
Some operators route their Vinh Long-area itineraries through My Tho on the way out of or back into Ho Chi Minh City, adding a stop at the Vinh Trang Pagoda, a large and brightly decorated Buddhist temple that sits just outside My Tho town. a private tour combining the Mekong Delta with a Vinh Trang Pagoda visit from Ho Chi Minh City and, for groups who prefer a set departure rather than a private car, a one-day Mekong Delta and Vinh Trang Pagoda tour both fold this stop into a day that otherwise resembles the standard Vinh Long orchard-and-canal itinerary. For more on the pagoda itself, see our guide to Vinh Trang Pagoda in My Tho.
A different kind of stop, more common on itineraries that lean toward hands-on activities rather than sightseeing, is a household workshop demonstrating traditional coconut candy production — cooking down coconut milk and sugar, then cutting and wrapping the resulting candy by hand. a Mekong Delta river tour from Ho Chi Minh City including a coconut candy-making workshop adds this stop to a river-and-orchard day of the kind already common around Vinh Long and Cai Be, and it pairs naturally with the honey-tea tasting and bee-farm stops some operators include on the same route.
The One Distinction Worth Remembering
If there is a single thing to carry away from planning a Vinh Long visit, it’s this: Vinh London is not Can Tho, its floating market is not Cai Rang, and its identity comes from its river islands, orchards and brick kilns rather than from being a delta hub. Travelers who keep that distinction straight — and who decide in advance whether they want the quieter island-and-orchard version of the Mekong or the larger-city, floating-market version — tend to plan a smoother route through this part of southern Vietnam.
