One of the highlights of my visit to Vietnam was the exploration of the Mekong river's delta to the southwest of Saigon - a huge area of flat land created by silt deposited over thousands of years by the world's 12th longest river. It's 4350 km (2703 mile) length starts in Tibet (China) and continues through Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia (Khmer Republic), and at last Vietnam. And, by the time it reaches the the Pacific Ocean it discharges something like 475 cubic km of water annually! This also means that Vietnam is slowly extending its territory out into the ocean.
By the time the river reaches towards the delta it splits, we were told, into nine distributaries, some of which are immense. We saw one, for example, that was already about 1 km (0.62 mile) across and that was some 100 km (62 miles) from the sea.
Travel in the delta was difficult in some places because the country is still rolling out bridges - presumably at great cost - and this meant waiting for car ferries. Fortunately, we must have arrived at good times during the day, thereby avoiding queues. On other occasions, our party was bundled into several small traditional flat-bottomed boats powered by external engines - no, we didn't have to row (!) to get to our destinations.
We were taken to some interesting places in this way: swamps, rice paddies, flower gardens, homes hosting visitors for meals (a form of tourism), a crocodile farm, fish farms and so on.
Well, have a look at these water images:
AS
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