TransMékong

See all our services on mekong-delta.com

Our newer public-facing website encompasses not only the Bassac but all our services.

Cruise the Mekong delta [up]

The Mekong delta - a world of rivers

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Overnight cruises | overnight cruises | the ships | departures | programs | prices and terms | availabilities | booking |

The Bassac take you into the greener areas of the Mekong delta, overnight on the river and into the middle of the life about the river. They are entirely built of wood in the Mekong delta and according to the local marine traditions, and adapted for discovery cruises, open to outside and offering an immediate contact with the green surrounding of the ship.

Life on board

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    In a few moments, our availabilities for tomorrow and the day after.

For the imminent departures, we offer you a 20% late booking rebate.¹ Call 0292 382 9540 or enquire.

Day cruises | departures | breakfast | lunch | sunset | dinner | full day |

Our excursions team, , takes you on excursions with a meal and visits around Cần Thơ: Khmer theravada pagoda, floating market, or Cần Thơ by night, or even on a grand day out. The sampans can run the medium-range route and navigate and serve by night.

Floating markets

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A call in Cần Thơ

Activities in Cần Thơ

Make the best of your stay in Cần Thơ: venture towards a remote Khmer sanctuary, eat at a farmer's home, row a skiff in the style of the Mekong delta, and cruise back at sunset, with a snack on a Mystic sampan.

Or have a good time learning to cook a specialty of the Mekong delta, in a comfortable setting with a view on the Mekong, or learn the art of fruit carving with an experienced hand at the art of table decoration.

, who are family, put the same efforts in making your time enjoyable as you found with the Bassac and the Mystic sampans.

A meal, a night

We can recommend restaurants and a hotel. All are right on the pier, and you will find there the same attention as on board the Bassac and Mystic sampans.

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Let us take care of you when you are in Cần Thơ: here are some of the better ports of call for the discerning traveler.

from restaurants...

With our double culture, we are happy to be able to offer Vietnamese, but also European quality meals.

Nam Bộ restaurant

The oldest family restaurant, established in 1998. Vietnamese classic and Mekong delta cuisine, and for the travelers weary of Vietnamese food, western cuisine and espresso.

1 Ngô Quyền, Cần Thơ
restaurant@nambocantho.com
0292 382 3908

Sao Hôm

Right in the middle of the old market hall, facing the river, the Sao Hôm: classic Vietnamese cuisine and Mekong specialties, and also western cuisine and pizza, a must if you have kids.

Nhà lòng chợ cổ, bến Ninh Kiều, Cần Thơ
saohom@transmekong.com
0292 381 5616

l'Escale

l'Escale, the port of call, our gourmet restaurant on the terrace of the Nam Bộ hotel. Breakfast, coffee, jazz bar, and a breathtaking view.

1 Ngô Quyền, Cần Thơ
lescale@nambocantho.com
0292 381 9139, ask for l'Escale

...to the Nam Bộ Boutique Hôtel

The family's latest venture, the Nam Bộ Boutique Hotel is a tiny 7-suite hotel, focusing on caring hospitality.

1 Ngô Quyền, Cần Thơ
reception@nambocantho.com
0292 381 9139

Cuisine [up]

Be it in our restaurants, Sao Hôm and Nam Bộ in Cần Thơ, on the Mystic sampans or on board the Bassac, cuisine is one of our better assets, as we offer meals cooked and baked afresh including the bread and pastry for breakfast. As the Bassac have their own galley, they are very reactive to meet the needs and tastes of your passengers, even in case a surprise cake would be de rigueur.

Rice specialities: nem rế: from rice flour to dish

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BBC chef Rick Stein made the Bassac one of the first stops of his culinary series Rick Stein's Far Eastern Odyssey, broadcast in 2009.

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We are very proud that BBC broadcast Rick Stein's Far Eastern Odyssey, where he goes from Cambodia into Vietnam and the Mekong delta on board the Bassac II. If you are in the UK, you may see episode 1 and episode 2 on the BBC iPlayer. He took TransMékong's Nguyệt Ánh as his personal guide into the markets and into the Mekong delta's specialities.

Several dishes presented in his book, Rick Stein's Far Eastern Odyssey, he discovered on board the Bassac II, where he himself cooked a phở for the TV series. Among the delicacies he wrote about is the shrimp cooked with mango, Ánh's own creation that makes the reputation of our restaurant Sao Hôm in Cần Thơ.

Rick Stein's series are one of the very top cuisine programs in Europe, and we are very proud he chose us among all for his introduction to Vietnamese cuisine.

Rick and his 7-strong Denham Production team boarded the Bassac II towards Vietnam. Episode 1, in Cambodia, ends with the Bassac as a hint of what is coming next, whereas episode 2, in Vietnam, gets into the heart of the Mekong delta on board, with cooking sessions, market visits and the exploration of fisheries.

Who we are [up]

TransMékong is a family company established in 2003 in Cần Thơ, in the heart of the Mekong delta, by a franco-vietnamese couple. We both had a few years' prior experience managing projects and SMEs and the urge to escape from it all.

Our team is locally recruited and trained, and we learn from the newcomers as much as from the experience we build together. We foster personal development in a happy team, and many on board took part themselves in the construction of the boats.

We are independant and work very well with all the best receptives and agencies in Vietnam.

We originally bought the hull of an existing rice barge, stripped it bare and built Bassac I, with which we learned much about what building and running a cruise boat entails. Since then we designed ourselves and built Bassac II and III and the Mystic sampans according to the same tradition.

The Bassac pioneered cruises in comfort in the Mekong delta, and we strive to deserve remaining the reference in the region.

Thalassa, France's most renowned Magazine of the Seas, set up with us to host a program about the delta.

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We are very proud that Thalassa, the French TV Magazine of the Seas, invited us to stage to host a program about the Mekong delta.

Lise Blanchet's team, with Laurent Bignolas, came on a visit late October, first on a small shipyard to talk about wooden boat building, then on the fish market of Cần Thơ, with its live fish carrying boats. We shared some of the shipowners' good humour.

Next morning, we were very early with Ánh, Laurent and Benoit on the floating market in Trà Ôn to share a soup. The boat owners live right there and smaller sampans bring all it takes for breakfast. That was an opportunity for a bowl of hủ tiếu and a good chat.

Picture credit: Linh, from Club House, the fixer in Saigon. This is the interview set with Thalassa on board the Bassac. In the reflection, the stage, with Laurent Bignolas and Benoit; through the window, Ánh, Capt' Quyền and Lise Blanchet, who all act in the shade to make this happen.

Contact us [up]

News from the Mekong delta

Visit our Mekong delta newsletter on line. It addresses delta news, but also matters of society, history and more general matters. You will also find there news of our services and of navigation on the Mekong delta.

You may also subscribe to our news in English.

Contact us

Booking

Would you like to book a trip with us?

The message you send to us should include: the departure date of the trip you are considering, the number of passengers, whether there are children or not, the number of nights and the places of departure and arrival. We shall recontact you with an offer, and for further information. (or )

Feedback

Did you take a journey with us, and would you like to ? This address will be read by the management. Your encouragements and comments are very important to us.

Please especially don't hesitate to let the crew know if you liked their service: this is a powerful encouragement for them to keep up the good work.

3rd parties' commitments

TransMékong works with the most reputable agents in Vietnam, and through them with the best tour operators in the world. We stand by the commitments they make to you about our services and we encourage you to book through a reputable agent.

All our partners are bound by the same terms. In order to ensure you are working with reputable partners, please ensure that your agent:

• does not present or represent the Bassac or the Mystic sampans as their own services;
• does not present or let you believe that other services are interchangeable with the Bassac or Mystic implicitly;
• does not promise a special experience or services unless it is exlicitly their own services, a special offer or a chartered journey.

Some online agents misrepresent our relation or our services, and we cannot be bound by any promises these sites make. In particular, we do not work with bassacmekongcruise.com, jonquebassacmekong.com or mekongtourisme.com (Fareastour) or vietnamtravelimage.com or their affiliated websites.

In case of doubt about the services you were offered or if you booked a passage on board a Bassac and boarded another boat, please so we can confirm our services or help you.

If you are looking for third party reviews of our services, or do you wish to give us a review on a third party's web site, please check our courtesy links page.

Professional contact

. Are you a tour operator, a local relay to TOs, a tourism professional? We wish to know you as well as your products. Who knows, with a view to a partnership?

E-mail authenticity

All our formal mail messages bear a link to an authenticated copy available for two months on our SSL server.

Mail security

Our corporate mail is stored for awhile on our SSL server, so that you may authenticate it: follow the link to the top right, it opens a web image of the message as we sent it. Simply ascertain that the protocol is HTTPS and the domain is transmekong.com.

We may occasionally make commitments by mail with GPG-signed e-mail. Our GPG keys are the following:

Address	Fingerprint
nguyetanh@	11E8 9EEA F443 CB41 FA13 0FB6 7E68 6274 AA8F A32A
benoit@	FFBA 8C6B D600 A9AA 08F0 0F0F B554 FD51 12D6 17EE

All valid keys of TransMékong are signed by our own CA: 46104060 TransMékong NetSec (netsec@transmekong.com), all signed keys are reputed valid. If you have reason to believe one of our keys may have been compromised, please contact us.

Here is an introduction to GPG signatures.

Web site

Should you like to and its contents, please do not hesitate to contact us directly. We publish this web site ourselves, and would thus reply shortly.

Legal notes [up]

This website is copyright © TransMékong 2004-2024 and was developed in-house entirely with open-source software. It is best viewed with a standards-compliant browser, like most open-source browsers.

Terms of use

Terms of Use of this web site

In all the following, "this web site" refers to the present web site, in on-line version as accessible under the domain name transmekong.com or in off-line version and to their sub-directories, and "TransMékong" refers either to Công ty TNHH Xuyên Mékong, who own the administrative rights to this web site, or to this web site itself.

You are free to visit this web site.

All the information on this web site are informative only, and you take full responsibility of any consequences of the use you may make of them.

Links towards TransMékong

You are welcome to link to our web site. Please then link to this address: https://transmekong.com with the following as the anchor text: "Bassac - Cruise the Mekong delta".

<a href="https://transmekong.com">Bassac - Cruise the Mekong delta</a>

You may then benefit from our courtesy links exchange program.

Trademark

'Bassac', the logo 'M in a delta' and 'TransMékong' are trademarks and the commercial name of Công ty TNHH Xuyên Mékong.

Copy of all or part of this web site

All contents of this site is © 2004-2024 TransMékong except where explicitly mentioned otherwise.

You may use material originating from this web site provided you obtain TransMékong's express consent prior to employing all or part of this site for any purposes. Outside of an agreement, TransMékong may invoice you for the use you make of the contents of this web site.

If you are in possession of an offline version of this web site, these terms remain unchanged.

If you are using material from this web site, please make sure that you are properly mentioning either its origin as https://transmekong.com or '© TransMékong', setting an explicit link back towards TransMékong's web site and that you are not misrepresenting your relation to TransMékong or our services.

We are very serious about fair use but if your use of the contents of this site is unwarranted, we shall claim under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act with all the major search engines as well as press charges with the National Office of Intellectual Property of Vietnam, Cục Sở Hữu Trí Tuệ for misuse or misrepresentation of our trademarks.

Edition and maintenance

This web site is maintained and updated with open-source software on GNU/Linux operating systems, and to the best of our efforts respects the web standards as published by the W3C consortium. Please inform us in case a proprietary browser would not render it properly.

The scheduling and availabilities engine of this web site as well as the booking system in force in TransMékong (in all, the scheduler) and the CMS employed throughout the site are developed and implemented in-house.

We wish you a happy discovery.

The TransMékong team.

Site map & Footnotes

Home : : en français | TransMékong | Day cruises | Mekong delta | Nine Dragons | A historic Bassac | Courtesy links |
Opportunities : : en français | job - management | job - sales-marketing | boat for sale |
Bassac : : en français | overnight cruises | the ships | departures | programs | prices and terms | availabilities | booking |
9Dragons : : en français | 9Dragons |