Planning

The Mekong, and what it is doing now

Four thousand nine hundred kilometres, six countries, and the thread that ties this whole region together. Where you meet it on a trip, which journeys still run, and what the dams have changed.

Plan my trip

What the river is

The Mekong rises on the Tibetan plateau and reaches the sea through nine mouths in southern Vietnam, about 4,900 kilometres later. It passes through or along China, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam, and it is the largest inland fishery in the world: something over two million tonnes of fish a year, feeding perhaps sixty million people.

It is also not navigable end to end and never was, which is a fact with consequences. The rapids at Khone Phapheng, on the Lao–Cambodian border, stopped French gunboats in the 1860s, and the railway they built across Don Det and Don Khon in 1893 to portage around them was an admission of defeat. That single obstacle is a large part of why the French colonial project in Indochina turned inland rather than upriver.

The other structural fact is the Tonle Sap. In the wet season the Mekong rises enough to push water backwards up the Tonle Sap river into the great lake in central Cambodia, which swells to five times its dry-season area. In the dry season it drains back out. That reversal is the engine of the Cambodian fishery and it is the thing most affected by what is happening upstream.

Where you meet it on a trip

Place	What the river is doing there	Which of our routes
Huay Xai to Luang Prabang	A wide brown highway through forested hills	Thailand and Laos, 9 days
Luang Prabang	The confluence with the Nam Khan, and the Pak Ou caves upstream	Most Laos routes
Vientiane	A border, with Thailand on the far bank	Northern Laos
Golden Triangle	Three countries on one bend	Northern Thailand
Four Thousand Islands	Braided across 14 km, and the largest falls in Southeast Asia	Vietnam and Laos overland
Kratie	Deep pools holding Irrawaddy dolphins	On request
Phnom Penh	The confluence with the Tonle Sap, which reverses twice a year	Most Cambodia routes
Kaam Samnor to Chau Doc	An international border you cross at walking pace	Vietnam and Cambodia, 12 days
The delta	Nine mouths and the densest agricultural landscape in Asia	The 5-day crossing

The journeys that still run, and the ones that do not

River travel in this region is contracting, and it is worth being honest about that rather than selling a romance that has partly gone.

Still running

Huay Xai to Luang Prabang, two days downstream with a night at Pak Beng, about USD 23 on the public boat. Three days upstream.
Phnom Penh to Chau Doc, about five hours including both immigration posts, USD 38 to 45.
Nong Khiaw to Muang Ngoi on the Nam Ou, an hour by longtail.
Cai Rang and the delta canals, which are working waterways rather than tourist routes.

Gone

Nong Khiaw to Luang Prabang down the Nam Ou. Ended by the seven dams built on that river between 2013 and 2021. It was one of the best boat journeys in Asia.
Most of the Mekong cargo passenger service in Laos, replaced by roads and now by the railway.
Reliable dolphin sightings at Kratie and Don Khon. Still possible, no longer probable.

What is happening to the river

Two things, and they compound. The first is dams: more than a dozen on the Chinese mainstream upstream, two completed on the Lao mainstream at Xayaburi and Don Sahong, and dozens on tributaries including the Nam Ou. They change the timing of the flood pulse, which is what the fishery and the Tonle Sap reversal depend on, and they trap the sediment that built and maintains the delta.

The second is sand mining, which removes an enormous volume of riverbed material every year, mostly for construction. Combined with the sediment trapped behind the dams, the result is that the Vietnamese delta is subsiding and salt water is pushing further inland each decade. It is one of the most exposed large deltas in the world.

You will not see this on a three-day boat trip. It is the honest background to what you are looking at, and it is why we would tell anyone whose interest is the river to come sooner rather than later.

The dolphins, honestly

Irrawaddy dolphins live in a small number of deep pools in the Cambodian and southern Lao Mekong. The population fell to about eighty animals and has recovered to somewhere above a hundred, which is better news than this species usually gets and is still a very small number.

You can look for them at Kratie and at the pool near Don Khon. We use boats that hold their distance and cut the engine, and we do not promise a sighting, because nobody honestly can. Operators who guarantee one are either lucky or approaching too close.

If you see them, it is a grey back and a blunt head for about two seconds. It is not a whale-watching experience and expecting one leads to disappointment.

Common questions

Questions travellers ask most

Is a Mekong cruise worth it?

The multi-day cruise ships between Siem Reap and Ho Chi Minh City are a legitimate way to travel and they are a different product from what we build: fixed departures, fifty to a hundred passengers, and a schedule.

We use small boats for specific journeys instead. If a cruise is what you want, we are not the right operator and we will say so.

Which single Mekong journey is the best?

The two-day slow boat from Huay Xai to Luang Prabang, for the length of it and for the fact that nothing is scheduled for twelve hours.

The Phnom Penh to Chau Doc crossing is the most interesting, because it is an international border at river speed.

Can I swim in it?

People do. The current is strong and inconsistent, there is significant boat traffic, and water quality varies enormously. We do not encourage it in the main channel.

The tributaries and the falls pools — Kuang Si, Li Phi — are a different matter.

Is the river dangerous in the wet season?

The scheduled boats run all year and the operators know the river. High water is faster and browner rather than more dangerous.

The exception is the speedboat between Huay Xai and Luang Prabang, which we will not book in any season.