Vietnam · Can Tho City
Where to Stay in Cần Thơ, Can Tho City
Cần Thơ is the largest city of the Mekong Delta in southern Vietnam, a river city of canals and floating markets on a branch of the great Mekong.
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Where to stay in Cần Thơ
The right area depends on your trip — here's what each neighbourhood is best for.
Where you stay in Cần Thơ turns on the waterfront or the town. The streets along the Ninh Kiều quay keep the river, the market, and the boats within a walk, and staying by the water suits anyone here for the delta. The river runs past the quay.
Boats crowd the landing. Out toward the canals and the floating markets, the town gives way to orchards, waterways, and river villages. A room by the water trades the quay for the dawn markets, the fruit gardens, and the quiet canals of the delta.
Green orchards line the channels. Stay by the quay for the river, or out for the markets. The town centre sits just back from the Ninh Kiều quay.
About Cần Thơ
Cần Thơ is the river capital of the delta.
What is Cần Thơ known for?
On the Hậu river, a great arm of the Mekong in the south of Vietnam, it is the heart of the delta country, and it keeps the busy floating market of Cái Răng where boats trade on the water, a green maze of rivers and canals through the orchards, a lively quay along the waterfront, and the rice fields and fruit gardens of the delta around. The river runs wide and brown. Green orchards line the banks.
What are the main landmarks in Cần Thơ?
The floating market of Cái Răng is the great sight of Cần Thơ. The crowd of boats trading fruit and rice on the river at dawn, wares hung from poles above each deck, draws people to the water, the emblem of the city, on the Hậu. A green quay lines the town.
The Ninh Kiều waterfront runs along the river through the centre, while the canals, the orchards, and the old market halls mark the country around Cần Thơ.
What is the history of Cần Thơ?
Cần Thơ grew as the market of the delta. As Vietnamese settlers moved south into the watery lands of the Mekong, a river town rose here at a meeting of the channels, and it became the trading centre of the delta, its markets floating on the water. Boats made the streets.
Much of the trade of the delta moved by river, and the floating markets of Cần Thơ gathered the rice and fruit of the plain onto the water. The French made it a river port. Under colonial rule Cần Thơ grew into the chief town of the western delta, with a French quarter, a cathedral, and quays along the river, the capital of the rice country.
It stayed the delta's heart. Through war and peace Cần Thơ remained the largest city of the Mekong Delta, its floating markets busy and its canals full of boats, the gathering place of the rice bowl. The markets still float at dawn.
Cần Thơ keeps its rivers and its markets in the delta.
Where is Cần Thơ?
Cần Thơ lies in the heart of the Mekong Delta in southern Vietnam, on the Hậu river. The city sits on the flat, wet plain of the delta where the arms of the Mekong braid toward the sea, a green country of rice fields, orchards, and countless canals, barely above the water. Rivers thread the flat land.
The delta runs green to the sea.
What is the climate of Cần Thơ?
Heat and heavy rain shape Cần Thơ's tropical year. Warm weather holds all year in the delta, with a wet monsoon from spring to autumn and a drier, sunny season the rest of the year. Monsoon rains fill the paddies and canals.
Warm days run much the same.
How do you get to Cần Thơ?
Cần Thơ lies in the Mekong Delta, on the highway southwest of Ho Chi Minh City. Buses and roads run to it across the delta over the great bridge on the Hậu, and an airport links it to the cities. Boats fan out through the canals.
Ho Chi Minh City lies northeast up the road.
Updated August 2026