Original subtitles

Right across our planet, there is an incredible variety of astonishing

landscapes.

One of the most beautiful anywhere in the world is the Mekong River.

It stretches from Tibet for 2 ,700 miles to the South China

Sea.

The Mekong crosses great mountain ranges.

It cascades through waterfalls.

It gathers in incredible lengths.

And the Mekong nourishes one of the most diverse regions on our planet.

The river's fish are counted in their billions.

And it

sustains the lives of over 60 million people.

The mighty river faces great challenges.

So now it's time to appreciate the value and celebrate the wonders of the

Mekong.

The Mekong River begins its great journey to the sea in an area that's

called the roof of the world.

The Tibetan Plateau lies just north of the Himalayas.

It's over 600 miles long and over 1 ,500 miles wide.

The largest plateau on Earth.

still rising.

The movement of a great tectonic plate below it, the Indo -Australian plate, is

pushing it slowly upwards.

Known as the Third Pole, the Tibetan glaciers are, after the polar ice caps,

largest source of fresh water in the world.

They bring water to seven major rivers and well over a billion people.

According to Tibetan folk stories, Buddha created the rivers by taking a

sword to the mountains, slicing them open to release the water.

Tibetans use sacred prayer flags to bless this life -giving landscape.

Here, the slowly gathering Mekong is known as Dachu, or River of Rocks.

As it courses down through mountainous southwest China, the river descends over

4 ,000 meters, carving a long, narrow valley through rock over 2 billion

years old, and gathering huge volumes of water along the way.

Until it reaches the border between Myanmar, Thailand, and Laos, the so

Golden Triangle.

Here, mountain ranges intermingle with hills in a younger landscape, formed

millions rather than billions of years ago.

The uplands are no longer barren. They're covered densely with trees.

Forest surrounds the Golden Triangle for thousands of square miles, collecting

water and sending it towards the rivers.

vast areas remain, despite the damage done to the forests by opium cultivators

and loggers.

Much is ancient forest that took shape after the last ice age.

For thousands of years, the greater Mekong has been a haven for a mind

array of species.

This is one of the most naturally diverse regions on the planet.

The Greater Mekong is home to 20 ,000 different plant species.

To 800 species of reptiles and amphibians.

There are a thousand bird species, like the great hornbill, fruit -eating lovers

of a densely forested habitat, and hundreds of different mammals,

including

rare and endangered species like the white -handed gibbon, which can leap

metres.

It's thought they never come down to ground level.

And there's another mammal species that once trod this landscape in their

thousands.

Elephants.

Most of the elephants are gone, the victims of poaching and habitat loss.

But in Laos, on the banks of one of the Mekong's many tributaries, is the

Mandalao Sanctuary, where a few can still be found.

Khun Duan Chang is a former mahout. He was trained to ride and care for

elephants from boyhood.

Every day, we will bring all of our five elephants, come down to the Nam Khan

River. They do a bathing, they drink the water, and they just clean.

Water is very important for the elephant.

They drink a lot, and they don't have the stress. They drink at least... 100

150 liters a day of water.

The water at Nam Khanh is very important for the elephant and for the local

people living here.

These five elephants are among just 800 remaining across Laos.

Five years ago, this sanctuary brought up 400 hectares of jungle for them to

roam. So this tiny group could live the same way as their ancestors.

Now we were working with the elephants to let them go out and eat fresh food in

the jungle.

In the morning, we bring elephants up to Hue Cane Stream to our 400 hectares.

Big piece of land.

They have a lot of wild jungle ginger and the vine and a lot of bamboo.

And this is elephant favorite.

The sanctuary wants to help the elephant population begin to grow once again.

And they have a chance to having a baby and to increase their population for the

future. They need the big space and big piece of land and no people

go around them and no poaching and no hunters.

And the elephants, they have a chance to go and meet and to breed and have a

baby.

Around half of the elephants left in Laos survive in the wild.

One day an elephant raised here could even join them.

I'll go.

We're going to lead the elephant back into the wild.

But we have one baby bull here.

His name is Kit.

He's four years old.

So he cannot survive right now to send him back into the wild.

We need more elephants from other places.

And with Mandalao, we're working with the Belgium Zoo.

They have baby elephants.

They're going to send back to Mandalao.

At the same time, we're going to lead them back together into the wild. At

least he has two or three of his friends, and they can survive, and they

increase their population for the future.

As the Mekong travels through Laos, its strength grows as it absorbs a host of

other rivers and collects rainwater from over 70 ,000 square miles of higher

ground.

The water's path towards the Mekong can be astonishingly beautiful.

At the Quang Si waterfall, the waterfall of the deer, the water drops down tiers

of limestone towards a series of turquoise pools.

Legend has it that the water here was so beautiful, a golden deer decided to

make the fall its home.

The natural beauty of the area has inspired human spirituality.

At the meeting point of the Mekong and the River Nam Khan sits the ancient

capital of Luang Prabang, a spiritual center for over 600 years.

The city's Buddhist temples are home to an active community of monks.

Every morning before dawn, they set out in their saffron robe to collect alms.

Towering over the city is the sacred mountain, Mount Fusi.

And a little along the Mekong is an unexpected place of pilgrimage.

Riverside caves with thousands of images of Buddha.

Next, we follow the mighty Mekong to a land...

where its water dominates the entire landscape.

We're following Southeast Asia's great river, the Mekong, as it travels through

the country of Laos.

Along this part of the river, traditional cast net fishing is still a

sight.

By the riverside, you might see water birds, like Asian openbills.

Or even, with luck, the critically endangered giant ibis.

Incredible birds that grow over a metre long.

Or water buffalo that are kept to plough the surrounding farmland.

The Laos stretch of the Mekong connects to a lake, which is large enough to

stand out from space.

Nam Nguong is also known as the Laos Sea.

Despite every appearance of a natural paradise, this is actually a man -made

reservoir, created at the end of the 60s when Laos built its first.

hydroelectric dam.

The Nam Nguong Dam still generates a major slice of the country's power.

But the Mekong then tracks its natural ancient course for hundreds of miles as

it crosses between mountains along the low -lying plains of the Korat Plateau.

At Sam Phan Bok, the Mekong reaches its own Grand Canyon.

In the dry season, from December to May, Sam Phan Bok, or Three Thousand Halls,

reveals a pockmarked landscape created by the river itself, as whirlpools of

water, loaded with sediment, twisted into the sandstone riverbed over

of years.

Scientists believe that 800 ,000 years ago, an area close by on the Bolivian

Plateau was struck by a great meteorite over a mile wide, throwing debris across

a tenth of our planet.

As the mighty Mekong is just about to leave Laos, It reaches the widest point

its entire journey, spreading out over eight miles from shore to shore.

The extraordinary force of this river has carved out a maze of seven channels

and countless islands.

And just downstream,

is the largest complex of waterfalls in asia the cone falls

created by an upper layer of hard basalt rock that resisted erosion by the

water nearly 10 million liters of waterfall here every second

that's almost double the niagara

falls

Beyond the waterfalls, the Great River reaches new territory and flows into a

country that lives on the Mekong's water.

Cambodia.

Here, the Mekong can unleash incredible force.

When the rains come, floods can overcome vast swathes of the country.

Overwhelming villages and devastating crop.

The overflowing water can be seen from space.

Near the centre of Cambodia, the Mekong connects to another major river, the

Tonle Sap.

The Tonle Sap naturally changes course.

In monsoon season, the Mekong swells so much that the Tonle Sap is forced to

flow backwards, away from the sea.

And this river, whichever way it's flowing, connects the Mekong to the

Tonle Sap Lake.

The Tonle Sap Lake is the largest freshwater lake in the whole of

Asia.

The life force of the entire Mekong River system.

Even in the dry season, it covers nearly 1 ,000 square miles.

In the wet season, it expands to four or even five times that size.

Three million people live on the vast floodplain of this lake.

Nearly all rely on it for their livelihood.

From October to March each year, the lake has always seen one of the greatest

animal migrations on Earth, with fish arriving here in their billions, making

this the biggest inland fishery in the world.

Fishing communities here live in stilt houses or floating wooden homes, able to

cope with any flood.

My job is here.

I don't know if I'm doing it right or wrong, but I'm still here.

My job is here. I like it here.

My job is here.

I want to stay here and talk to you.

But in recent years, the negative impact of human activities has begun to be

felt.

Sailor Chayar studies the lake.

She's the project manager for Wonders of the Mekong, a collaboration between

international universities and the Cambodian government.

To her, the key to this wonder lake lies in the surrounding forest, which floods

in the wet season.

But this flooding is benign.

When the forest is under water, fish hatch and thrive here.

This is Damreng. This is one of the flooded forest species in the Talay

Normally, in the dry season, you can see until the roof of the tree.

And in wet season, when the water rise up, it can go to three meters or to five

meters.

The flooded forest is important for the fish because they can eat some leaves

and some insects inside the branch of the tree.

But most parts of the flooded forest are cleared and converted to the farming

land.

Today, Sailor and her team are meeting up to analyze how the reduction in

breeding ground is affecting the fish with the help of local fishermen and

they

fish using traditional giant arrow trap

After collecting the fish, the team heads back to the floating village to

measure the haul.

Recently,

less water has been flowing into the lake, the result of more dams upstream

climate change, with lower rainfall during the rainy season.

Before 2019, the fishermen can catch the bigger fish between 2

to 3 kilograms per head of fish in the flooded forest.

And currently, last year, 2020, 2019, the

water is shallow and not flood the forest.

It affects the fish. The amount of fish has declined.

And the number of the big fish also declined.

The Tonle Sap faces an uncertain future.

The lake also has an extraordinary past.

For just a few miles from here, an ancient civilization grew to greatness.

Using the water, from these shores.

Our journey along the Mekong River has brought us over 2 ,000 miles from its

source to Cambodia.

We've now reached a lower lying land, not too far above sea level.

Butterflies thrive here, like the swallowtail and nymphalidae.

And plant life changes too. You might see the red hibiscus.

Or Cambodia's national flower, the fragrant rumdul, used by Cambodians to

treat dizziness.

Deep in the jungle, not far north of the great Tonle Sap Lake, lie the remnants

of a civilization of extraordinary genius.

For centuries, many ruins were abandoned to the jungle, wrapped in vines, banyan

and silk cotton trees.

In the 19th century, the French rulers of Cambodia began to push back the

and uncover...

the ruins.

This is the vast ancient city of Angkor.

Angkor was built around a thousand years ago by the rulers of the ancient Khmer

Empire, which stretched across much of Southeast Asia.

It's estimated that Angkor was once bigger than modern -day New York City.

Its greatest temple is known as Angkor Wat.

Measuring over 400 acres, it's the largest religious site in the world.

It's no accident that Khmer rulers built their capital close to the Tonle Sap

Lake.

Experts believe that their civilization gained its immense power from its

mastery of water.

Angkor is based on a complex system of canals leading from the Tonle Sap to the

city.

When the Mekong and the Tonle Sap flooded, water would flow down the

into a series of reservoirs to be stored and used during the dry season.

It meant that the Khmer could triple their rice harvest.

Other canals were filled with fish to feed their people.

All this enabled this great civilization to flourish for hundreds of years.

But eventually it overreached itself.

Experts think a big factor was the collapse of Angkor's ingenious water

Overexploitation of the land, combined with successive droughts and floods,

meant the system couldn't cope.

And when the water ran dry, life here became unsustainable and its great

were abandoned.

Angkor may have collapsed, but 75 miles away by river, a modern city uses many

of the same principles.

Cambodia's capital Phnom Penh is also built on water.

Phnom Penh began life as a village on the Mekong riverbank, with houses built

wooden stilts or floating on the great river.

When the French colonized the country in the mid -1800s, they built on the

marshy floodplain, draining the water with a system of canals not unlike

The city has always flooded during the monsoon season.

And that is a challenge for every building across the city, small and

Architect Tomi Urafal is an expert in Phnom Penh's unique architecture.

We are here at the Olympic Stadium.

This is one of my favorite places, as my dad told me when I was young.

This is a public space that's really important for the people in the city in

1960s and until now.

The place is still used for the people.

They just come to hang out.

They can come together, meet, and exercise.

The stadium, known as the Olympic, though it's never staged the Games, was

designed in the 60s by the great Cambodian modernist architect Van

Van Mollivan came up with the natural solution with the lights and

The sitting areas open the gap underneath the sitting place of the gap.

And if we look at the back, we can see the vertical panel. It brings the

light from outside to inside.

Van Mollivan was a pioneer of what's now known as green architecture, using

design to adapt buildings to their environment.

The stadium includes features which protect it from Phnom Penh's annual

Here is a favorite spot.

We can see the pond is around the building.

The pond collects the water from the roof.

You can see the big roof just brings the water from the top to the ground by the

column inside.

During the late 50s and mid -60s, Van Molivan built more than 100 buildings in

watery Cambodia.

Two of the best are at the Royal University of Phnom Penh.

We are at the Institute of Foreign Languages. The building designed by Van

Molivan in 1965 and finished in 1972.

And here too, managing the flow of water is key.

Using ponds.

is one of the unique features in Van Mollivan's master plan.

It's inspired by the Angkorian temple, what we call the Khmer hydraulic system.

The Angkorian temple, we build the ponds around the temple and collect the water

from the building.

Van Molivan also built his own concrete equivalent of Cambodian wooden stilts.

To avoid the flooding, Van Molivan tried to make the building to raise up the

column. We can see the sitting area of the students raised on the

cantilever of the beam and the column.

There are fears that Phnom Penh, like Angkor before it, is developing so fast

that one day it won't be able to absorb the Mekong's waters.

Land has become so highly prized that the city's lakes and canals, crucial

sponges for the annual floods, are now being filled in.

Even parts of the Mekong itself are being filled in with sand.

But it's generating power for cities that is an even greater threat to the

river.

The Mekong and its tributaries are being harnessed, bit by bit, by hydroelectric

dams.

Hundreds of them.

China has built 11 dams on the upper Mekong.

Across the whole of the Mekong region, 537 dams have been built, and

152 more are planned for the future.

The effects of blocking the flow of the river alongside drought is even visible

from space.

The river's normal healthy color is brown.

from the nutrient -rich brown sediment needed by both farmers and fishing

communities.

In 2020, a NASA satellite observed that in the dry season, the Mekong had turned

blue, the color of a less healthy river with shallower flow.

There's a danger that the great Mekong fish migration will become a thing of

past.

and fields could be starved of nutrients and water.

On the final leg of its great journey to the sea, the Mekong River reaches

Vietnam.

Here there is a different type of forest, mangrove forest, which is found

swamps or coastal salty waters.

Much has been lost to farmland, but there are protected areas, like the

Flooded Forest.

Here, the most prominent tree is the Kajaput, a twisting tree unusually tall

such a watery environment.

Trasou is also a sanctuary for 70 species of birds, like oriental

darpers.

spot -billed ducks, and a huge variety of herons.

As the Mekong presses further towards the sea, it splits into channels known

the Nine Dragons.

This is the Mekong Delta.

The land averages less than a meter above sea level.

Much of this region would be sea.

Were it not for sediment that's been carried here over thousands of years by

Mekong itself, then compacted to form the land mass.

The Mekong Delta is home to around 20 million people.

Life is lived on the water, with houses and farms backing onto a gigantic

network of canal.

Over the centuries, around 50 ,000 miles of canals have been constructed across

the delta, so that during the rainy season, the Mekong's nutrient -rich

can spread across millions of hectares.

The biggest crop here is rife.

Paddy fields stretch out across the delta for miles on end.

Wet rice is still sown and harvested by hand, with three crops every year.

The Delta is one of the most important agricultural regions on the planet,

producing enough food to feed 200 million people worldwide.

At the center of the Mekong Delta is Kanto, a water city and the biggest in

region.

It's a city that wakes up early.

And it revolves around one very special morning event that's only possible to

experience by boat.

Local journalist Chi Mai has been many times.

getting up before dawn like the rest of the city.

It's amazing.

come from different provinces in Mekong Delta and they carry with them proof or

specialties from their hometown, bring into Cai Rang floating market, trade

local vendors or vendors from other cities.

And the wholesalers will stay here for three days or a week until they sell

everything and then take the empty boats back to their hometown and refill it

before coming back to the market again. That's how it works and that's how it's

been working for hundreds of years.

Vietnam produces a million tons of watermelon every year.

A big slice of that makes its way to this market.

Because it's near Lunar New Year, there are lots of watermelons. In our culture,

watermelons' colors represent luck.

You know, it's very beautiful to decorate your house with this kind of

and also it's a season.

So that's why you see most of the boats here are selling watermelon right now.

There are huge wholesale operations here, but it's the small traders who

the place buzzing.

She started to sell beverages and coffee and milk and everything from five when

the market started.

She's been doing this for 20 years.

She used to be a rice farmer, but then she discovered that this trade makes

money.

For the sellers, the market is their entire livelihood.

It's common to specialize in one particular product.

Mr. Phan Van Hu and Mrs. Le Thi Hong have been selling mangoes for two

But no trip to the market is complete without a visit to Mr Tran Van Trong.

You put it here and it becomes a table.

By 8 a .m., the market is over and the sellers disperse so they can recharge

ready for their next busy morning of trading on the river.

After Kanto, the Mekong is almost at the end of its great journey, having

traveled nearly 2 ,700 miles from the Tibetan mountains across six countries.

Just 50 miles on, the Mekong's fresh waters flow into the salty water

of the South China Sea.