Craft Villages of the Delta, 3 days

Day 1

Ho Chi Minh City to Ben Tre: coconut and mats

Pick-up at 07:30. Ben Tre town is about 85 km from central Ho Chi Minh City, roughly two hours. The road crosses the Tien River at Rach Mieu; the second Rach Mieu bridge opened in August 2025 and the old ferry has stopped.

The first session is coconut, in two parts. A family that weaves baskets from coconut-leaf stalks — the craft village around Hung Phong has worked this way since 1992 — shows the splitting, soaking and weaving, and lets you start a rim. Then a short drive to the coconut-fibre workshops around An Thanh, which grew from two workshops in 1980 to more than forty; here the craft is industrial and loud, and it explains where the fibre in a doormat comes from.

After lunch and a rest, the second session is mats. Hand weaving still goes on around Nhon Thanh, near Ben Tre town; a weaver works the loom with you for an hour, and you see how patterns are counted in strands. Late afternoon at a coconut-candy workshop, where coconut milk, malt and sugar are cooked and cut by hand.

Day 2

Rice paper and puffed rice cakes; on to Cai Be

Grilling your own sheet of rice paper over charcoal

The third session starts early, while the drying racks go out. A family that makes rice paper in the style of My Long spreads batter thin and grills the sheets over charcoal on both sides; spreading evenly is the hard part, and you will understand why after your first sheet. The same morning, a maker of banh phong in the Son Doc style shows the sticky rice steamed, pounded with coconut milk and sugar, pressed and set out in the sun. Too much sun hardens them; rain spoils them. Grilled, they puff to three or four times their size.

After lunch the car runs west, about 57 km and an hour or a little more, to Cai Be. The fourth session is the Dong Hoa Hiep old village, where 36 houses are between 100 and 200 years old and seven are recognised as heritage houses. A guide who knows the families walks you through two of them. The Ong Ba Duc house dates from the 1850s.

Day 3

Popped rice by boat; back to Ho Chi Minh City

A private boat at about 07:00 takes you to the family workshops on the Cai Be side for the fifth session: popped rice and coconut candy, sometimes rice wine, as boat operators there describe them; we confirm which families are working in your plan. These workshops are on the tour-boat circuit and get busier later in the morning; the early hour is the reason we go first. For the sixth session, cross to An Binh islet, where a popped-rice workshop in a village nearly a century old shows the whole sequence by hand — popping, cleaning, boiling sugar, mixing, pressing, cutting. It reported close to 4,000 visitors a year in 2023, so you will not be alone, but you will be early.

Lunch near the river, then the drive back: about 108 km, two to two and a half hours, arriving mid-afternoon.