The best Mekong River cruises to add to your bucket list

From a 36-guest ship navigating Mekong backwaters to a 15-day Viking cruisetour across Vietnam and Cambodia

The Mekong River is one of the world’s great waterways by almost any measure: 3,000 miles in length flowing through China, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam, one of the most biodiverse river systems on earth, and the organizing geographic fact of an enormous region of Southeast Asia whose cultures, economies, and daily lives have been shaped by the river’s seasonal rhythms for thousands of years. A Mekong River cruise is not simply a scenic journey, though the scenery is extraordinary: it is a format of travel that gives access to communities along the river’s banks that road infrastructure does not serve in the same way, and whose relationship to the river, through floating markets, riverside temples, fishing communities, and agricultural villages built to the water’s edge, gives the cruise experience a cultural depth that bus tours through the same region’s cities cannot replicate.

The majority of Mekong River cruise itineraries sail the lower section of the river in Cambodia and Vietnam, which gives travelers access to the Mekong Delta’s extraordinary agricultural landscape, the capital cities of Phnom Penh and Ho Chi Minh City, and the historical sites of both countries. A smaller number of cruises explore the upper Mekong in Laos and Thailand, where the river narrows, the landscape becomes more mountainous, the communities become more remote, and the pace of daily life along the banks is further from the tourist infrastructure of the lower section. The vessel size on the upper Mekong is necessarily smaller, which gives those itineraries an intimacy that the lower Mekong’s larger ships cannot achieve in the same terms.

The six cruises below appear in U.S. News & World Report, covering sailings from seven nights to 15 days across both the lower and upper sections of the river. Each offers a distinct character and itinerary structure that suits different travel priorities.

1. AmaWaterways’ Charms of the Mekong sails from Ho Chi Minh City to Cambodia

AmaWaterways’ Charms of the Mekong is a seven-night sailing that departs Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, and disembarks in Kampong Cham, Cambodia, covering the lower Mekong’s most historically and culturally dense section aboard either the AmaDara or AmaMaya, both of which carry up to 120 passengers. The itinerary’s southbound-to-northbound direction gives travelers the Mekong Delta’s floating market culture and wetland landscapes in Vietnam before crossing the border into Cambodia, where the river’s character changes and the historical and cultural program shifts to the temples, palaces, and Buddhist institutions that Cambodia’s Khmer heritage has built along the riverbanks.

The Vietnamese stops include Cái Bè, where a local market and temple give the cruise its first direct encounter with the Mekong Delta’s agricultural market culture, followed by Tân Châu and the wetlands of Tra Su Forest, a flooded cajuput forest whose bird and wildlife population gives the cruise a natural dimension alongside the cultural program. The Tra Su wetlands are among the most biodiverse forest ecosystems in the Mekong Delta and are best experienced by small boat through the forest canopy, which the shore excursion format the cruise provides makes practically accessible.

In Cambodia, Phnom Penh gives the cruise its most historically significant stop: the Royal Palace and National Museum give the capital’s imperial history a physical address, and the optional Buddhist blessing ceremony gives travelers a direct participatory encounter with the living religious practice that the country’s temple architecture expresses in built form. The stops at Oudong, Koh Oknha Tey, Angkor Ban, and the disembarkation at Kampong Cham extend the Cambodian program through smaller riverside communities, whose silk weaving and school visits add depth to the cultural itinerary beyond the capital’s institutional attractions. Optional pre- and post-cruise land packages give the AmaWaterways itinerary........

© Quartz