Hydrofoil from Saigon to Can Tho?

There was one about 6 years ago but too many accidents the Gov stops it altogether.

That service has stopped, there are speedboats but only on charter, making it pretty expensive.

How much for speedboat charter, and how would you hook up with that?

Pretty expensive ... and very uncomfortable. Have you ever been on one for more than an hour?

Agree, uncomfortable and 4 hours is long and loud. Last time I checked, charter was around USD 450.00 one way, any travel agent in Saigon should be able to help.

Check some local ports for very cheap (but bit slower) cargo/taxi boats. Did that twice last March, I guess its a lot nicer than those touristy speedboats...

Well, $450 is ridiculous. The roads going down to Chau Doc and that area are in terrible condition, basically they're like abandoned construction sites for a good part of the way. I may be wrong, and maybe they're actually rebuilding those roads, and I just happened to go through when no work at all was being done on them. But they sure did tear up a LOT of road at once, not a very sensible way to do it. I think about half the distance getting down there (150km out of 300km) is really rough, where your bus needs to go off the road down to the side on top of seriously potholed dirt makeshift roadway, often only wide enough for one lane of traffic to move (so need to wait for all traffic from oncoming direction to pass before moving). Slow backups are common. Then when you hit a stretch of finished roadway, you feel a sense of relief to finally be back on something that's like a real road, only to realize within a few hundred meters that it was just a short stretch of road in between two much longer stretches of non-road. Again and again and again. It makes travel down to that area psychologically torturous. It reminded me of the stretch of highway in Cambodia between Siem Reap and Poipet. It doesn't top that, but it gives you some idea.

Yes, they are "repairing" the road. You are better off going via Can Tho. It is a bit of a detour, but it will be faster, at least until they have finished "construction".