61000    Visits to the nearby towns of Can Tho, Vinh Long and Mito demonstrate that farmers are already employing a variety of methods to support their families.

61001    Charter a small boat and the guide will surely take you to an orchard.

61002    Tourists are served tea and fresh-picked tropical fruits and talk with the farmers in their garden.

61003    Customers leave small tips as they depart.

61004    This is just a little side business, but in every house interest in the farmers' stories was high, for example the family's experience living through the Vietnam War and the future of the Mekong Delta.

61005    My interpreter in Mito, Gwen Le Hoa said, "Since the completion of the North-South power lines, electricity has come to delta towns that didn't have light before," as she pointed to an island in the middle of the river.

61006    When I visited her family's home on the island, their television was arranged on the earthen floor.

61007    Her father, who used to be a member of the Saigon Theater orchestra, dusted off his old violin and treated this sudden visitor to performances of classical songs like "Bojo" (Longing) and "Ue Wo Muite Aruko" (Sukiyaki).

61008    The farmers of the Mekong Delta are not rich, but they have opened their doors to the world.

61009    What is happening in the Mekong basin now, where the hot winds of change have begun to blow?

61010    I traveled up the Mekong Delta from Vietnam by boat, car and plane to Jinghong in China's Yunnan Province.

61011    I met farmers of the Delta, the Cham of Cambodia and the hilltribes of Laos and Myanmar, who all talked about carrying on their traditional heritage and the future of the Mekong River.

61012    Among waves of golden dry-land type rice, old women of the Yao ethnic group wear traditional clothing as they cut the tops off the rice with sickles.

61013    The mountain range that forms Laos' border looms before my eyes.

61014    This is the village of Phadeen in Phayao Province, Northern Thailand.