Last reviewed:
What this site is
mekongdelta.boats is a privately run travel guide covering boat tours, floating markets and river travel across the Mekong Delta in southern Vietnam, and the Mekong River through Cambodia and Laos. It exists because most information on this subject online is either a booking page dressed as a guide, or a list of adjectives with no practical detail in it.
Our goal is narrow and specific: help you decide what kind of Mekong trip to take before you book, using concrete numbers, honest trade-offs and timings that actually work. If the right answer is "don't book that tour", we say so.
What this site is not
This is not the official website of any tour operator, boat company, port authority or government agency in Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, Myanmar or China. We are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or acting on behalf of any of them. We do not sell tickets, take payments, issue vouchers, operate boats, or employ guides.
When you click a booking link on this site, you leave mekongdelta.boats and arrive at GetYourGuide, an online travel agency that handles the transaction on behalf of licensed local operators. Your booking contract is with them, not with us. All payments, confirmations, changes, cancellations, refunds and customer support are theirs to handle.
How we make money
We are a participant in the GetYourGuide affiliate programme. If you book a tour after following a link from this site, we may receive a commission from GetYourGuide. This never changes the price you pay — the commission comes out of GetYourGuide's margin, not out of your fare.
Two things follow from that, and we think you are entitled to know both:
- We have a commercial interest in you booking something. We try to counteract that by being explicit when a cheaper or free alternative exists — hiring a boat directly at Ninh Kieu wharf, taking a public coach instead of a tour transfer, or skipping a tour entirely.
- We do not accept payment for placement or reviews. No operator has paid to appear on this site, and none can. Our recommendations are based on how the products work, not on commission rates.
How we research and update
Every page on this site is written from a combination of sources:
- Operator listings on GetYourGuide and the operators' own pages, for itineraries, inclusions, durations and prices.
- Official tourism and government sources for site opening hours, transport and administrative details.
- Published reference material — geography, hydrology, history, species information — for the background sections.
- Traveller reports in aggregate, for the practical details operators do not publish: what time the queue forms, how long the sampan leg really is, which stop is a shop.
Our position on numbers
Prices, schedules and opening hours in Southeast Asia change without notice, and any travel site that presents them as fixed facts is misleading you. We handle this in three ways:
- We give ranges rather than single prices, because that is what the market actually looks like.
- We show a "last reviewed" date on every page, so you can judge how stale a figure might be.
- We tell you, on every page, to confirm the live details on the operator's own page before booking.
Distances, durations, geography and seasonal patterns are stable and we state them plainly. Prices and timetables are not, and we treat them accordingly.
Corrections
If something on this site is wrong, out of date, or has been overtaken by events — a market that has moved, a bridge that has been built, a price band that no longer reflects reality — tell us. We would rather fix it than defend it.
Email support@mekongdelta.boats with the page and what is wrong. If you are a tour operator and we have described your product inaccurately, the same address works, and we will correct factual errors promptly. We will not remove accurate criticism.
Photography
Every photograph on this site is either freely licensed or in the public domain, sourced from Wikimedia Commons, and attributed to its author. The full list is on our photo credits page. We do not use stock images that misrepresent a place, and we do not present a photograph of one location as another.
Languages
The site is published in English, Vietnamese, Simplified Chinese and Bahasa Melayu. Translations are adapted rather than rendered word for word: currency references, cultural framing and practical advice differ by audience where that makes the page more useful. Legal and policy pages are published in English only, and the English text governs.
Get in touch
One address for everything: support@mekongdelta.boats. We read it. We are a small operation, so replies are not instant, but corrections and factual reports get priority.
See also: Contact · Terms of use · Privacy policy
