Visitors to Ho Chi Minh City can choose from a wide range of boat trips into the Mekong delta, but one of the first to take tourists beyond the towns and well-known Cai Be floating market to smaller farms and settlements is Bassac, run by a French former oil exec and his Vietnamese wife.
The market town of Can Tho was all noise and shouts and busy people, but once the refurbished rice barge with its cosy en suite cabins cast off from a town pier, all was peaceful. My thoughts turned to Willie Wonka's factory as we cruised along a chocolate-coloured channel.
Disembarking on a small, equally Dairy Milk canal in rural Hao Thanh district, we took a short walk with guide Lan along raised paths to the house of a Mrs Cam. Tourists are still rare enough in these parts for our small group to draw excited "hellos" from groups of children even 100m away across the water. One farmer snapped a pic of my weird blonde head with his phone.
Everything growing so abundantly in this fertile land is used for something, Lan told us: leaves for salads and soups, water hyacinth leaves for household goods, banana stems for rope, and fruit, of course. Mrs Cam and family served us pineapples, mangoes and jackfruit, and tiny cups of tea at her waterside house and, with help from Lan, our little group of five Brits chatted and exchanged jokes with our hosts until it grew dark.
The people of the delta are known within Vietnam as happy-go-lucky types who live for the moment. Thanks to all that cocoa-y silt in the river, the land is super-fertile, and life is pretty laid-back. Lanterns and torches lit our way back to the landing stage, where we climbed into the small boat that would deliver us back to the Bassac.
I stared back up the bank to where the family were waving and smiling. Yes, we'd paid for the privilege of dipping into their lives for an hour or two, but I felt very pleased with the bargain, and our hosts gave a good impression of being happy with it, too.
• An overnight trip for two (sharing a cabin) on the Bassac, including private transfers from Ho Chi Minh City, booked through Experience Travel, (020 393 7750, experiencetravelgroup.com/vietnam) costs £280, including lunch, dinner and breakfast, and activities
