We Took a Luxe River Cruise Through Asia’s Mekong Delta. Here’s What It’s Like Onboard.

In the last 20 years, water parks, restaurants, and Broadway performances have defined cruise ships, which typically carry thousands of guests along heavily traveled sea routes. Other luxury hotel providers such as the Four Seasons, Ritz-Carlton Yacht Collection, and Aman at Sea, have created large “yachts,” with amenities like beach clubs and submersibles designed to replicate the superyacht experience, but for hundreds of guests. Other smaller vessels cruise the Galapagos, the Nile, and popular but remote areas.

My seven-night journey aboard Heritage Line’s boutique river boat, The Jahan, was an entirely different experience. I was one of just 14 passengers (a welcome perk of traveling in September during the high-water, shoulder season) on a trip that took us so far off the tourist trail that it felt like we were going way back in time.

The slow, tranquil sojourn along the lower Mekong River, cruising through rural Cambodia and Vietnam’s backwaters, felt more like being on a 19th-century yacht than a modern cruise liner. Partly because The Jahan’s exterior bears a faint resemblance to a colonial paddle steamer, and its neo-Victorian interior is a mix of colonial British India and French Indochina: plantation-style furniture, stylized decorations, period staterooms and wrought-iron details.

The 26 cabins, each with a riverside balcony and lounge, are available with four-poster beds and a personal butler to complete the old-world experience. But the heated swimming pool, beside the open-air bar, excellent fusion cuisine with Southeast Asian influences combined with friendly, almost over-the-top service, give it modern-cruise credentials—as do the gym, sauna, and massage room on the lower deck.

The Jahan is one of seven all-suite river boats in Heritage Line’s southeast Asia fleet. The fleet is the brainchild of founder John Tue Nguyen, who grew up on the Perfume River in the imperial city of Huế. Heritage is taking advantage of the rising popularity of river cruises but with a distinctive flavor in a largely untapped part of the world. Uniworld, which specializes in bespoke inland cruises, reports a 50 percent increase in river-cruise participants over the last two years, forecasting it will surpass ocean cruises by 2028.

On paper, the itinerary is similar to a yacht charter: Guests wake to a new location each day, and can explore inner lands and riverbanks, while avoiding train stations, hotels, or airports. But in reality, it’s an unspoiled world of stilt houses, floating villages with crocodile farms, Buddhist temples, rough-hewn wooden canoes, and plenty of friendly locals. We started in Siem Reap, Cambodia’s second-largest city, cruising down the Tonlé River with the Cardamom mountains in the background.

On day two, we stopped at the remote village of Angkor Ban—the antithesis of a tourist hot spot—to visit rare, century-old wooden houses and monks in orange robes collecting their daily alms. By the afternoon, we’re riding by tuk-tuk (a cart pulled by a motorcycle) to the even smaller village of Prek Bangkong, known for creating some of the finest silks in Asia, and the historic home of the royal family, known as the House of Norodom, before they moved to the Royal Palace in the heart of Phnom Penh.

In between the shoreside jaunts, are early-morning Tai-Chi sessions overlooking the water, evening cocktails by the pool, and delicious buffet meals (chef Bora’s chicken amok and Khmer green soup were exceptional) in the dining room. Guests have the option of bonding—or not—and our group from six countries soon were sharing tables, travel stories, and even two-wheeled oxcarts that lumbered over potholes (aptly described as “not comfortable, but unforgettable”) to a local school run by a non-governmental agency.

There were bicycle rides through rice-paddy fields into villages known for pottery or palm sugar. It never failed to impress how friendly and hospitable the people were, and how we couldn’t have had the same experience if we weren’t on the river.

On day four, The Jahan stopped at the waterfront quay in Phnom Penh, and we toured the city by “cyclo,” a three-wheeled, pedal-powered vehicle, stopping at the palace, the famed silver pagoda and the infamous “S21” prison, where the Khmer Rouge executed a quarter of the population, estimated between 1.5 million and 3 million Cambodians, under the reign of Pol Pot from 1976 to 1978.

The most sobering experience was a visit to Tuol Sleng, the former high school where the Khmer Rouge tortured and killed 20,000 Cambodians. The museum was so bleak, with photos of the prisoners on the walls, preserved prison cells, and other gruesome remains, that several of our group had to leave. That night, two monks and a Theravada Buddhist priest conducted a chanting and blessing ceremony aboard The Jahan. It was a cultural experience we welcomed after just a small glimpse of what the country had gone through.

The next day, with time to take stock, we took a break from visiting land as the boat passed from Cambodia into Vietnam. The change of countries became apparent with the blare of moped horns and busy roads. On shore, our tuk tuks raced through fruit orchards, stopping for us to gorge on mangosteen and jackfruit.

In My An Hung Village, we had another “time stood still” moment with a local family, who performed music for us, and later that day in Cai Be, women made paper, cookies, and wine from rice.  In the bustling market in Tan Chau, a fusion of Chinese, Kinh, and Khmer communities added flavor to the colorful streets—but my preference remained for the rural neighborhoods, where tended gardens grew beside dense tropical foliage within canals that prevent the farmland from flooding. That last night, we made the most of bartender Ratanak’s much-appreciated mixology skills in the upper deck bar.

During the trip, we saw no other tourist groups and encountered The Jahan’s sistership, Jayarvarman, just once as it headed upriver in the opposite direction. If glitz, glamour, and haute cuisine are your things, this quaint cruise into the heart of the Mekong Delta—the opposite of the heart of darkness—is probably not for you. But if you appreciate authenticity, good Southeast Asian food, rarely visited destinations, and a luxe (but not outlandish) cruise experience, you may want to consider a river trip like this.

The Jahan’s seven-day trip from Siem Reap to Saigon during low season (high-water period), appropriately named “The Lost Civilisation,” starts at US$3,000 per person for a Deluxe Stateroom, which includes meals, excursions, and onboard entertainment. Spa treatments and cycling tours are extra.