An Giang in the flood season: the Mekong at its gentlest

In most of Vietnam, floods are something to fear. In An Giang, on the Cambodian border, people wait for them. Every year, from around the seventh or eighth lunar month (usually September to November), the Mekong rises and spreads across the rice fields, bringing the silt that makes next year's harvest possible — and a season of fish, shrimp and wild vegetables with it.

What changes

For a couple of months the landscape becomes a sheet of water. Paths and gardens disappear, houses on stilts seem to float, and rows of sugar palms and melaleuca trees stand knee-deep in the flood. The busy dry-season fields turn into fishing grounds, with families out in small boats setting nets from dawn.

Water lilies

This is also water-lily season. Wild lilies bloom in the flooded fields and canals in purple, pink and white, and local families pick the long stems to sell in the markets and to cook — they turn up in sour soups, hotpots and salads. Go early in the morning, when the flowers are still wet with dew and the light is soft.

How to see it

Base yourself in Chau Doc. Take a small boat into Tra Su melaleuca forest, where the water is carpeted with bright green duckweed and storks wheel overhead, and ask your guide to take you out to the flooded fields at sunrise. Try lau mam, Chau Doc's fermented-fish hotpot, which is at its best with the season's fresh greens.

It is a quieter, slower time in the delta — exactly what makes it special.