Southwest of Ho Chi Minh City, buses plying Highway 1 eventually 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 behind the scruffy settlements draped along the highway hint at things to come, their burnished golds and brilliant greens interspersed with the occasional white ancestral grave. Seventy kilometers out of Ho Chi Minh City, a left fork marks the turning to My Tho, an amiable market town that nestles on the north bank of the Mekong River’s northernmost strand, the Tien Giang, or Upper Rive

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 uncrowned boulevards belying a population of around 200.000, and you can easily escape the melee by hopping onto a boat or wandering into the backstreets.

This daily influx of visitor seems appropriate, given the town’s history Chinese immigrants fleeing Formosa (modern- day Taiwan) after the collapse of the Minh dynasty established the town in the late seventeenth century, along with a Vietnamese population keen to make inroads into this traditionally Khmer – dominated region. Two centuries later the French, wooed by the district’s abundant rice and fruit crops, rated it highly enough to post a garrison here and to lay a (now-defunct) rail line to Saigon; while the American War saw a consistent military presence in town. Today My Tho’s commercial importance is as pronounced as ever, something a walk through the buy town market amply illustrates.

What to Do ?

Boat trips are the highlight of Mytho to some destinations including a coconut workshop, a honey - bee farm and orchard. If time allowed, tourist should not miss Vinh Trang Pagoda, a beautiful and well-maintained sanctuary and Dong Tam snake farm, a center for breeding spoision snakes producing venom for export.

When to go?

Trips to Mekong Delta are suitable all year round but the best time is the monsoon from June to September.

Travel Tips

Bring along camera, hat, sunscreen and insect repellant.

Hotels
1. Chuong Duong Hotel
Add: 10 road 30/4, ward 1, My Tho Town
Tel: (84.73) 870875
2. Guest house of Tien Giang Province
Add: 23 road 30/4, ward 1, My Tho Town
Tel: (84.73) 873150
3. Song Tien Hotel
Add:101 Trung Trac road, ward 1
Tel: (84.73) 872009
4. MyTho 1 Hotel
Add: 67, 30/4 road, My Tho City
Tel (84-73) 3872543
Restaurants
1. Bach Tung Vien Restaurant
Add: 171B Anh Giac St., My Tho City
Tel: (84.73) 388 8989
2. Cuu Long Restaurant
Add: 81, 30/4 St., My Tho City
Tel: (84.73) 387 0779
3. Ngoc Gia Trang Restaurant
Add: 196A Ap Bac St., My Tho City
Tel: (84.73) 387 2742
4. Trung Luong Restaurant
Add: Highway 1, My Tho City
Tel: (84.73) 385 5441
Places to visit
Vinh trang Pagoda
Cai Be Floating Villag
Dong Tam snake Farm
Go Cong Fine Arts Village