The Mekong River runs from the mountains of Laos through Cambodia to the Nine Dragons delta in Vietnam, and this film follows that course village by village. In Laos, women dye rice red, green, and yellow for the new year while men play Delo, a game whose origins nobody now remembers, and young monks enter the Wats to begin Buddhist training under vows aimed at Nirvana. In Cambodia the camera moves from the temples of Angkor, still hazy in its own origins, to the recent history of Pol Pot, who studied in Paris and Cultural Revolution-era China before founding the Khmer Rouge and killing off a third of the country. Between 7 and 9 million landmines remain buried there, adding roughly ten amputees a day, and the film sits with Jesuit priest Enrique Figaredo, who runs a wheelchair workshop and delivers chairs to villages. The journey ends in Vietnam's delta, where 5,000 kilometers of canals feed the rice fields around Cantho, a small city with a large population living off the river.