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.
61015 The men have disappeared from this ethnic Yao village of 319 people in 40 households.
61016 Three years ago job recruiters from Taiwan and Singapore came to the village.
61017 The men were offered jobs because they could understand Chinese.
61018 Borrowing 40,000 to 70,000 baht with their land as collateral, they left to work in Taiwan or Singapore.
61019 The villagers, who settled here 16 years ago after being driven over the mountain border by their government, have maintained a slash-and-burn agrarian lifestyle.
61020 The surrounding area, however, has been raised to the status of a national park.
61021 Just recently, a one-hectare cultivated field on farmland that neighbors caves has been banned.
61022 Leaving to find employment elsewhere has increased, as "farming might become impossible".
61023 Among the three-generation, 12-member Koi family, the father and the husband are in Taiwan.