Rapids on the Mekong river in dry season.

The great Mekong river is not doing well.

This year is especially dry in Southeast Asia, due in part to this year’s El Niño, which tends to bring drier conditions to SE Asia. The Ping river, which flows through Chiang Mai, for example, is very low below the weirs that hold in the water for the section through the city center.

On the Mekong river, it is dry for other reasons as well.  From The Bangkok Post,

Ever since the completion of a few dams across the Mekong river in China, the once mighty river, which flows through all the riparian countries except China, has diminished to a trickle every dry season. The situation this year is worse than the previous years and the worst is yet to come with more dams being built.

If they were alive today, our forefathers would be in shock. The  mighty Mekong –   the traditional lifeline of Chinese, Burmese, Thais, Lao, Cambodians and Vietnamese – has dried up so badly this year that it no longer qualifies  to be called a river.

Boat travel from Chiang Rai’s Chiang Khong district to the old Lao capital of Luang Prabang,  a popular tourist route  has been halted because the water too shallow  for boats  with the capacity to accommodate more than four people.  Cargo boats from China have been stranded in Chiang Saen district of Chiang Rai.

Chirasak Inthayos, coordinator of the Network for the Conservation of Mekong River Natural Resources and Cultures, said that the river’s condition is the worst for more than a decade.  He could only imagine how much worse it will be by April, when the dry season normally peaks.

For the next three weeks our students are in the field doing the Rivers course, studying the impact of dams on the Pak Mun river, a major tributary of the Mekong, doing a transect of Northeastern Thailand (Issan), and then paddling the Yom river.  On Saturday some of the instructors are going to run the Yom to see how dry it is.  We often end up having to pull the canoes in a few shallow sections in a normal year, so we’re interested to see what this year is like.