Cái Răng floating market: when to go, how to get there and what to eat

Before sunrise on the river outside Cần Thơ, boats tie up side by side and start trading: pineapples, watermelons, pumpkins and sweet potatoes, by the boatload. Small boats weave between them selling coffee and noodle soup. This is Cái Răng, the biggest floating market in the Mekong Delta.

When to go

• Early. Trading starts before dawn and is busiest from first light until about eight. By nine, most of it is over.
• Any day of the week: there is no market day.
• The weeks before Tết are the busiest of the year.

Getting there

Cái Răng is just outside Cần Thơ, about 170 km from Sài Gòn, or three to four hours by road. Most people sleep in Cần Thơ and take a boat from the city’s riverside at dawn. To do it in a day from Sài Gòn, you leave in the dark and come back in the evening.

How to read the market

• Look up. Each boat hangs what it sells from a tall pole, the cây bẹo: a pineapple on the pole means pineapples on board.
• The big boats sell wholesale to smaller boats, which take the fruit to markets on land. You can usually still buy a single fruit: just ask.

Breakfast on the water

• Hủ tiếu: rice noodle soup, cooked on a tiny boat and handed across to yours.
• Cà phê sữa đá: iced coffee with condensed milk, from the coffee boats that paddle between the big ones.
• Fresh fruit, peeled for you on the spot.

Good to know

• A small boat (xuồng) gets you closer to the trading than a big tour boat.
• Bring cash in small notes, a hat and sunscreen: the sun is strong by eight.
• The market is smaller than it used to be, as roads replace rivers. Go soon.

Go with us

Our Floating Market Sunrise leaves Sài Gòn before dawn for Cái Răng: breakfast on a sampan, then bicycles through the orchards and lunch with a farming family.