Sundown in Saigon, and the streets are steaming. The air vibrates with the whir of nine million motorbikes and the chatter of eleven million people, all spilling into alleys, balconies, and roadside noodle stalls. Everywhere I look, the doors are flung open. Old-timers chew the fat over ice-cooled beers, aunties in silken pyjamas fan charcoal grills heavy with skewers of lemongrassy chicken and caramelised pork. Pocket parks double as public gyms, Vietnamese pop thrums from tinny speakers. It’s dizzying, so fantastically alive. So very Vietnam.
The best way to make sense of it all is to dive straight in, which is why I’m clinging to the backseat of a clattering Vespa driven by my guide, Bui Quan Khanh, a young Saigonese fresh out of tourism school. We swerve through a snaking mass of red and white taillights, past the coffee shops and neon-lit bars of the hip Binh Thanh district and the gleaming new towers of Thu Duc City, which have mushroomed in recent years. As we zip through narrow alleys and working-class neighbourhoods, Khanh fills me in on the city’s transformations, the new metro network and last July’s launch of a mega-city masterplan, in a bid to become Southeast Asia’s next economic powerhouse.
The excitement in the air is palpable, but so is the fresh cilantro and nước mắm fish sauce that still perfume these streets. We stop to snack on tiny, stir-fried snails we pry out of their shells with toothpicks, and sip tamarind lemonade at a cafe overlooking the Mong Bridge, built by architect Gustave Eiffel (yes, that Eiffel) during Saigon’s French-colonial era. From a fluorescent-lit open kitchen, women work flaming skillets of bánh xèo, shrimp-studded savoury pancakes, which we stuff into spring rolls piled with Thai basil, lettuce and wasabi leaf.
This after-dark Vespa tour is part of a new immersive itinerary created by Condé Nast Traveller in partnership with the legendary travel company Abercrombie & Kent, designed to trace Ho Chi Minh City’s shape-shifting spirit and the lush riverlands that lie beyond. The collaboration, Curated Escapes, also includes trips to Japan, Sonoma, Uganda, Peru, and India.
From my base at the plush Park Hyatt Saigon, the following days play out in a blur of colour and motion: we pick through kaleidoscopic heaps of produce at street markets, slip into the incense-thick air of Chinatown’s temples, and sample the city’s next-gen restaurants, like Vietnamese-American chef Peter Cuong Franklin’s perennially packed Anan, where I pair pho-flavoured G&Ts with foie gras spring rolls and beefy bánh xèo tacos.
And then, all is still. Once the last of Ho Chi Minh City’s suburban towers have vanished from view, the Mekong Delta opens into a glimmering patchwork of rice paddies and orchards, all stitched together by a sinewy maze of rivers and man-made canals. The Mekong’s great tributaries writhe through it, their waters feeding fields so fertile they supply more than half of Vietnam’s produce.
It’s here we swap engines for e-bikes, and for the next few days, follow narrow dirt tracks, village roads, and ferry crossings through durian groves and citrus orchards, where branches sag under the weight of their bounty and the air smells of damp soil and ripening fruit. Chickens scatter at our wheels, and scooters whizz past with saddlebags bulging with football-sized jackfruit. “This is the rice basket of Vietnam,” says our guide, Thuan Khuu. “Every 10 kilometres, the crops change, and each family grows what works best for their land.”
At dawn the next morning, we’re in Can Tho, the delta’s largest city, floating between wooden barges on the olive-coloured swells of the Cai Rang Market. Vendors sling pineapples, dragon fruit, and fresh fish from deck to deck, while giant eyes painted on the boats’ bows peer ahead, believed to guide captains to good fortune. We pull up alongside Auntie Bai’s sampan boat, a local legend who has been ladling out chewy hủ tiếu pork noodles from her floating kitchen for more than four decades.
Later, we ride inland along a raised dyke road, weaving through wedding feasts and funeral processions that feel jubilant all the same. Skinny houses flash past, their facades draped in sun-bleached cloth like accidental Christo and Jeanne-Claude installations. In Cờ Đỏ village, a group of men waves us over from a porch shaded by banana trees. Work is done for the day, and the booze is flowing. We join them for shots of rượu đế, a local moonshine sweetened with banana, and fatty grilled rice field rat, which tastes faintly of chicken. “People here don’t chase after much,” says Khuu. “They have everything they need: fish in the ponds, rice in the fields, and plenty of water. It took generations of digging canals and taming floods to make this land liveable. Now, they just enjoy the easy life they’ve earned.”
But feathering this nest has been a shared effort, Khuu tells me later. Once a swampy frontier of the Khmer Empire, the delta drew waves of settlers over the centuries: Vietnamese sent south by imperial decree, refugees from the fallen Champa kingdom, and Chinese merchants escaping troubles up north. Together, they cultivated these wild plains. “We have a saying: A nearby stranger is better than a relative far away,” Khuu says, “Everyone here learned to collaborate and rely on each other – that’s what makes them so welcoming.”
That spirit still runs through the delta’s maze of waterways, where cultures are as diverse as the produce growing in the fields. We make merit at gilded Khmer pagodas where saffron-robed monks sweep the courtyards, and visit the floating Cham village of Châu Giang, where hijab-clad women swap out “xin chàos” (“hello” in Vietnamese) for Arabic “as-salamu alaykums”, and weave bright silk brocades in candy-coloured wooden homes.
We pass through flooded forests and bird-rich wetlands, but it’s the unscripted moments in between that stick: the roadside coffee breaks, the exuberant children shrieking “hellooooo” from doorways as we cycle by. Pedal, pause, repeat. The bike’s pace, with a van shuttling us over longer hauls, feels perfectly tuned to the delta. Fast enough to reach places far beyond the tourist grid, but slow enough to notice the smell of coconut husks drying in the sun or stop for tea in a kind stranger’s backyard.
By the time we arrive at our last stop in the riverside town of Chau Doc, the setting sun has painted the water bronze and turned the palm fronds into swaying silhouettes. A sampan glides past, and in the distance echoes the faint din of a night market. The day ends as it began: in perpetual motion, somewhere between land and water, with the soul of Vietnam humming all around.
This 11-day small group trip runs March 7 - 17, October 3 - 13, November 7 - 17, and December 5 - 15, 2026. Find other Condé Nast Traveller x Abercrombie & Kent journeys around the world here.
Journey highlights include:
- Encounter extraordinary architecture, vibrant markets and a dynamic food scene in Ho Chi Minh City
- Spend six days cycling through less-visited regions of the Mekong Delta, with support from a specialised team the whole way
- Take in the incredible bird life in the flooded forest of Tra Su Cajuput and the Bang Lang Stork Sanctuary
- Experience southern Vietnam’s captivating floating markets
- Glimpse the local of life in the largest Cham community in Vietnam (one of Vietnam’s 54 ethnicities, descended from the ancient Cham Kingdom)
This article was first published on Condé Nast Traveler.