Handpicked experience · Ho Chi Minh City
Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam
Cacao here is a shade crop grown under the coconuts on plots often smaller than a hectare, fermented by the grower in the yard — so the chocolate visit is a farm, not a production line.
Ho Chi Minh City:- Several beautiful villages and green rice fields are on both sides of the vehicle’s windows
The Kimmy Chocolate Manufacture as a rest stop. Cocoa trees are carefully planted and taken care of by local farmers
Cai Be Floating Market:- we will move on a boat to the local village in order to witness how local people make some traditional products like pop rice cakes, rice wine, rice papers and coconut candy.
A crop seen where it grows rather than where it is packaged
Fermentation and drying explained by the people doing it
Tasting done against the ground the beans came from
Narrow channels entered by boat rather than looked at from a bridge
A day long enough to absorb the driving without rushing the stops
Working smallholdings instead of a show farm
A full day southwest of Ho Chi Minh City into Tien Giang province, where the Mekong splits into working channels and the orchards begin. Ten hours covers the drive out, time on the water, a visit to a cacao grower and workshop, and the return. The chocolate is the reason most people book it, and it turns out to be the most interesting part for reasons nobody expects.
Cacao in this part of the delta is not a plantation crop. It is grown in the shade of taller trees — coconut mostly, sometimes fruit or cashew — on holdings that are frequently under a hectare, and the growers ferment the beans themselves on the farm rather than sending them anywhere to be processed. Tien Giang has roughly two thousand hectares of it, almost all in smallholdings of that size.
So set your expectations accordingly. What you visit is a working yard: pods cut from the trunk with a knife, split open to show wet white pulp, beans turned in wooden boxes for several days while they ferment, then spread out to dry. Small-scale roasting and grinding follow. It is a genuinely instructive sequence precisely because it is not a production line — you can see every stage, and the person doing it is the person who grew the tree.
Vietnam grew cacao for a long time without being known for it, because beans left the country anonymously and were blended into other people's products. That changed in 2011, when a bean-to-bar maker set up in Ho Chi Minh City and began buying province by province, printing the origin on the wrapper. Delta beans have a reputation for brightness and fruit, with a coconut note that people argue about. A bar carrying this province's name on it exists because somebody decided the province was worth naming.
The water is not an add-on. Getting between places here is done by boat as a matter of course, and the smaller channels — too narrow for anything with an engine on the back — are where the delta stops looking like scenery and starts looking like infrastructure. Orchard stops, workshops and lunch fill the middle of the day.
It is a long day, with a substantial road section at each end and heat and humidity through the middle. Boats are boarded from banks and pontoons rather than proper landings, and the fermenting yard has a strong, vinegary smell that surprises people who were expecting the smell of chocolate. Wear something you do not mind marking.
Open it to pick a date and work out the price.
What the fare covers, and what to budget for separately.
The practical detail, and the answers people actually ask for.
Ten hours in total, including a substantial road section in each direction.
No. It is a grower's yard and small workshop, where the whole sequence happens on the farm.
Beneath taller trees, chiefly coconut, on plots that are commonly less than a hectare.
In the region of two thousand hectares, spread across a great many small holdings.
The growers, in wooden boxes on their own land, over several days before drying.
Beans used to leave the country unnamed and blended; a bean-to-bar maker began buying by province from 2011 and putting the origin on the label.
They are known for brightness and fruit, with a coconut character that not everyone agrees on.
A good part of it, since the channels are the normal way of moving between places here.