South to the Mouth.

The van pulls into a gravel driveway off a small side street. I grab my bag and an old women directs me down a narrow alley on the left side of the house. Behind the house is the Mekong. A narrow plank connects the shore to the small boat that will take me six hours down river to northern Vietnam. Nearby several young men unload bricks from a large barge. Our boat's engine starts and we ease into the current, heading south.

After several hours floating past dry farmland and buffalo pasture we arrive at the Cambodian border. The police checkpoint is in the colorful courtyard of an old country home. A guard stamps my passport while a budda watches us from the opposite wall. In a few minutes the process is repeated at Vietnamese customs, though here the atmosphere is different, a giftshop clerk watches over the transaction.

At the border we change boats and soon turn off into a side canal bound for the delta's northern city of Chau Doc. The water is overhung with branches--shading hundreds of free ranging ducks and providing diving boards for local children.

South of Chau Doc towards the coast lie hundreds of kilometers of busy waterfronts and markets, rice fields and shrimp farms.

Like Cambodia, southern Vietnam is waiting for the overdue rains of summer. Each hot afternoon the sky looks ready to burst. But aside from heavy winds, distant lightning, and rainbows the dry season continues.

The aquaculture industry appears to have brought economic stability to the delta's communities. It's small cities are busy with store fronts and motorbikes. In the countryside newly renovated levees stand guard over fields and homes whose natural protection--mangrove forests--have been cleared away in exchange for rectangular ponds. Ponds filled with shrimp larvae and fish fry, aerated by plastic paddle wheels that churn idly in the sunshine.

Along a secondary road a small path branches off to the east. For nearly ten kilometers it runs past small homesteads and football fields; through dry rice paddies and bamboo thickets. The path parallels a small brown canal, bridging countless tributaries. In some places small patches of mangrove forest remain. In one of these an old man digs snakes from the sticky gray mud. The path and canal end together at the Brassic River--one of the "nine dragons" of the Mekong Delta. Here blue/green tidal waters mix with the dark brown run off from the delta and slip slowly into the sea.

For nearly 4,400 kilometers people fish and float on the river. Boat props, paddle blades, and bare feet churn its muddy bottoms. Fish, otters, and springtails live and die under and on its shores. Here at the mouth of the Mekong an old man uses his only arm to start an outboard motor, breaking both the river's smooth surface and the afternoon's silence. As he accelerates, the wind hits his dark cheeks, and he smiles.