Has anyone been to the Mekong Delta area?
Any good tips for food, lodging and transportation?
What to take note for in pictures?
Yes I've been there. It's not easy to get around, nor is it easy to get lodging. Heck it's almost impossible to find someone that speaks english!
I found my way there via the usual day trip tours you can hire from Ho Chi Min City itself. The tour itself is your usual touristy stuff, drink coffee, see how sugar or sweets are made, etc etc.. quite boring. It was supposed to be a round trip but I asked the guide to leave us there so we could go find the guesthouse which we had made prior arrangements to stay at. A guesthouse which was by far the ONLY one in that whole area.
Through some insane stroke of luck + a few directions from the guide + a motorbike ride + a ferry ride, we met up with the guesthouse owner (the only person we knew of that could speak english in that area).
There we booked a private boat out into the delta, caught fireflies, watched the sun set while drinking Vietnamese coffee, visited villages that few tourists ventured to etc....
From there we stayed for 1-2 nights then hired another motorbike to get us to another "homestay" which ended up to be some chalet that caters to vietnamese locals, we did manage to visit some villages along the way but felt a little ripped off because they didn't understand what we wanted to see. Floating market became just some river side houses that sold stuff to tourists etc etc.
Trusting our motorbike riders completely, they managed to bring us back to a bus depot which then brought us back to Ho Chi Min.
Overall it was quite an adventure, but photographically speaking, the delta didn't offer me A LOT. Sure there were photos to be taken, but I think there are other areas of Vietnam which are more photogenic.