50 Fun Facts About Mekong River

How many countries does the Mekong flow through?

China, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam.

What is the Mekong officially called in China?

The name comes from the Lao kingdom of Lan Xang, though the characters can be read as turbulent green river.

On which high plateau does the Mekong rise?

Its headwaters are protected in the Sanjiangyuan reserve, alongside those of the Yellow River and Yangtze.

What is the estimated length of the Mekong?

Its drainage basin covers about 795,000 square kilometres.

Where does the Mekong rank among the world's longest rivers?

It is the third-longest in Asia.

What does 'Mae Nam', the Thai and Lao prefix in the river's original name, mean?

Khong itself is an archaic loanword meaning river, related to the Chinese jiang.

What does the Vietnamese name Sông Cửu Long, used for the Mekong in its delta, mean?

The delta splits into many distributaries, including the Tiền, Bassac and Hàm Luông.

Which two other great rivers run parallel to the Mekong through the gorges of Yunnan?

The Three Parallel Rivers area lies in the Hengduan Mountains.

Which three countries meet at the Golden Triangle tripoint where the Ruak joins the Mekong?

The wider region of the three countries was notorious for opium production.

Who coined the term 'Golden Triangle' in 1971?

Marshall Green used it at a press conference on the opium trade.

What does the name of the Khon Pi Long rapids on the Lao border mean?

They divide Chiang Rai in Thailand from Bokeo province in Laos.

Roughly how long is the Mekong's first stretch of Laos's western border, tripoint to Khong Chiam?

It later marks the same border again for another 850 km.

Which capital city stands on the Mekong at its junction with the Tonlé Sap?

The river's main distributary branches off just south of the city, beginning the delta.

What unusual thing happens to the Tonlé Sap river when the Mekong floods?

Floodwaters push back up into the Great Lake, then drain out again in the dry season.

Tonlé Sap holds what distinction in Southeast Asia?

UNESCO made it a Biosphere Reserve in 1997.

Tonlé Sap's post-monsoon water level can be how far above its dry-season level?

Its area swells from around 2,500 square kilometres in the dry season.

What is the first and main distributary that branches off the Mekong south of the Cambodian capital?

Its branching marks the beginning of the Mekong Delta.

Roughly what share of Vietnam's agricultural land lies in the Mekong Delta?

About 2.6 million hectares of the delta are farmed.

Which Mekong Delta city's research institute predicts a key road will be flooded 365 days a year by 2050?

Sea-level rise and land subsidence combine to threaten the low-lying delta.

Where do the Khone Falls, the widest waterfall in the world, lie?

They stretch 10,783 metres across in Champasak Province, near the Cambodian border.

The Khone Falls area is known as Si Phan Don, meaning what?

The falls are the main reason the Mekong cannot be navigated into China.

What did French colonists build after failing to get boats past the Khone Falls?

The Don Det-Don Khon railway carried cargo around the cataracts.

Who was the first European to encounter the Mekong, in 1540?

A European map of 1563 shows the river, though little was known upstream of the delta.

Which nation's trader Gerrit van Wuysthoff led an expedition up the Mekong to Vientiane in 1641-42?

European interest remained sporadic until the French arrived in the 19th century.

What was the chief finding of the French Mekong Expedition of 1866-68?

Ernest Doudard de Lagrée and Francis Garnier led it from the mouth to Yunnan.

Which Russian explorer found the source of the Mekong in 1900?

The French had extended their control into Laos from 1893.

What was found in excavations at Oc Eo, in the ancient Funan culture of the delta?

Funan, of the 1st century, was the earliest recorded civilisation on the river.

Which four countries founded the Mekong River Commission in 1995?

China and Myanmar joined as dialogue partners the following year.

Only which river basin has higher biodiversity than the Mekong's?

Estimates count around 850 freshwater fish species and 20,000 plants in the Greater Mekong.

On average, how often were new species discovered in the Mekong region between 1997 and 2015?

In 2009 alone, 145 species new to science were described there.

What fish, caught in the Mekong in 2022, is the largest ever recorded from a river?

It beat a 293 kg Mekong giant catfish caught in 2005.

How does the adult Mekong giant catfish differ from other big catfish in the river?

Young ones have barbels and teeth, but lose them by 30-50 cm long.

How quickly can a Mekong giant catfish reach 150-200 kg?

It can grow to 3 metres and is critically endangered.

Which freshwater cetacean, once common in the lower Mekong, is down to about 85 individuals?

Smooth-coated otters and fishing cats also live along the river.

Roughly how many tonnes of wild fish are landed from the Mekong basin each year?

Add aquaculture and other aquatic animals and the total is about 4.5 million tonnes.

About what share of Cambodia's annual protein intake comes from Mekong-system fish?

There is no alternative source to replace it if fisheries decline.

By the end of 2024, how many of the Mekong's mainstream hydropower dams were in China?

Of the 15 mainstream dams operating by the end of 2024, 13 were Chinese and two were in Laos.

The Xayaburi Dam in Laos sells 95% of its power to which neighbour's electricity authority?

It was the first of 11 dams planned on the lower Mekong and began operating in 2019.

What happened to the Mekong near Chiang Saen in July 2019, during the wet season?

Locals blamed the newly built Xayaburi Dam.

The First Thai-Lao Friendship Bridge, opened in 1994, links Vientiane with which Thai city?

It carries two lanes and a single railway line down the middle.

Roughly what share of Mekong sediment comes from the steep upper basin in China?

The upper basin supplies only 15-20% of the water but half the sediment.

How far did the Mekong Delta advance across the continental shelf over the last 6,000 years?

Around 8,000 years ago the coastline nearly reached the site of the Cambodian capital.

Mekong 'white' fish live in fast deep water; which category lives in slow, low-oxygen shallows?

Black fish live in slow, low-oxygen water; white fish prefer fast, deep, oxygenated channels.

Which historian suggests the name Mekong derives from Mā Gaṅgā, meaning Mother Ganges?

Early European traders also called it the Cambodia River.

Roughly what share of the Mekong's total flow has joined the river by the time it enters Cambodia?

Downstream, water levels rather than volumes govern how the flat landscape floods.

Roughly what share of Vietnam's rice output came from the Mekong Delta in 2011?

Kiên Giang, An Giang and Đồng Tháp each produced over 3 million tonnes, any two of them out-growing the entire Red River Delta.

In which year did Tonlé Sap and its provinces become a Biosphere Reserve by royal decree?

UNESCO had named the lake an ecological hotspot in 1997; nine Cambodian provinces are part of the reserve.

The Mekong giant catfish earned a Guinness record in 2005 as what?

It can reach 3 metres long, and conservationists use it as a flagship species for the river.

Which mountain range borders the Tonlé Sap drainage basin to the southwest?

Its peaks top 1,700 metres, while the Piandan Mountains to the north average about 500 metres.

The Cần Thơ Bridge over the Mekong's largest distributary opened in 2010, three years after what?

The cable-stayed bridge replaced the ferries that had run along National Route 1.