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One of the areas we visited in Vietnam was the Mekong Delta.
The Mekong River rises in Tibet and via China, Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam makes its way to the sea. Along the way it picks up a lot of mud and silt, much of this has been deposited over the years in the Mekong Delta with the result that it is the agricultural powerhouse of Vietnam. In the mountainous areas we saw rice being grown in contoured paddyfields about 3m wide where all the work has to be done manually, it's a struggle to get a single crop from this land. In the Mekong Delta the fields are large, farmed mechanically and produce three rice crops a year.
Sue Perkins did and excellent series The Mekong River for the BBC last year where she traveled from the sea right to the source of the river. The scale of just the delta region is huge and in a single day trip it was only possible for us to get a brief taste of the area.
The river itself is huge and a micro landscape in its own right. There are specific types of boat that have been developed for use on the river and we passed many boatyards where these vessels are built and repaired.
There are some new bridges that have made travel across the delta region easier.
And the pace of building is intense, we passed two massive new bridges that are under construction at present.
The river is a key transport route for commerce in the delta and the pace of life all along the river mirrors that in HCMC.
The river crossings are still mainly by boat running in convoy 24 hours a day.
On the ferries the lorries and cars get loaded first and then the scooters flow in around them like water.
It looks like a seascape but this is the Mekong River - it's huge!
We also took a trip through some small backwaters fringed with palms and banana plants.
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