Cai Rang Floating Market

Cai Rang is a wholesale market that happens to float. Barges arrive loaded with one crop each, pineapples, pumpkins, watermelons, sweet potatoes, and hang a sample from a tall bamboo pole at the bow so buyers can read the cargo from a distance. Smaller boats work between them, and a few of those sell coffee and bowls of hu tieu across the gunwale to anyone who waves. Trade starts before first light and the serious business is over within a couple of hours. Boats are hired from the quay in Can Tho, either a shared seat or a private sampan, and the run downstream takes about half an hour.

What you actually see

• The cay beo - the bamboo pole at each bow flying a sample of what the boat is selling.
• Noodle boats - hu tieu and coffee handed over the side from small sampans.
• Transfers at speed - sacks and crates thrown between hulls without either boat stopping.
• Phong Dien market - a smaller, less visited market further up the same canal system.

When to go

Leave the quay by half past five to reach the market at its busiest, between six and seven. By eight the traders are thinning out and most of what is left is carrying visitors. The dry season from December to April has the calmest water and the least rain. Book the boat the evening before rather than at dawn on the quay.

Honest expectations

The market has shrunk considerably as bridges and roads took the wholesale trade off the water, and what remains is smaller than the photographs suggest. Arrive late and you are watching other tourists. Engines are loud, the river is dirty, and shared boats will steer you into a fruit stall and a rice-paper workshop on the way back.

Nearby

Can Tho's riverfront and the smaller canals and fruit orchards behind Phong Dien.