Chau Doc, where the river comes in

Chau Doc does not look like the orchard delta further east. It is a busy market town where several communities meet. Sam Mountain, a hill of about 284 m on the edge of town, has around 200 religious sites on its slopes, and the temple of the Lady of the Realm at its foot is a major pilgrimage site; her festival, held on the 23rd to 27th days of the fourth lunar month, was added to UNESCO's intangible heritage list in December 2024. Across the river, on Chau Giang and Chau Phong, live Cham Muslim communities in stilt houses around their mosques; the Mubarak mosque was first built in 1750 and rebuilt in 1922.

On the river itself, houseboats sit over cages of farmed catfish, a way of life the national tourism authority dates back about fifty years. Twenty kilometres out of town, the Tra Su cassia forest covers about 850 ha of flooded woodland where storks and egrets nest in the canopy.

What has been over-sold: the town centre is plain and noisy, the mountain's main temple can be crowded and commercial around festival days, and the forest in the dry months is a shallower, more walked place than the photographs taken in October suggest.

In 2025 the flood was forecast to peak at Chau Doc in the second week of October, at about the second alarm level. High water is a reason to come, not to stay away; the town is used to it. Pilgrim crowds peak around the Ba Chua Xu festival in the fourth lunar month, usually in May or June of the western calendar, so check the lunar dates for your year.

Children under 1.3 m and adults over 70 enter Tra Su free, according to the same source; all Tra Su figures are from that guide, so check them on site. On our routes the forest boats and entrance are included. We found no published entrance fee for the pagodas and mosques; leave a donation if you wish.

The three-day Can Tho and Chau Doc route gives it one night and drives home. The four-day Ben Tre to Chau Doc route ends here after a night and a morning. The five-day route to Phnom Penh gives it the two nights it deserves and leaves on the 07:00 boat.

• You have two days or fewer — the round trip from Ho Chi Minh City is nine to eleven hours in the car
• You travel in the dry season mainly for Tra Su; the water is low, and April is the hottest month
• You dislike crowds and your dates fall on the Ba Chua Xu festival
• You are flying out of Ho Chi Minh City the next morning; Chau Doc is too far for a last night