page_title: Mekong
section_title: Drainage basin
hierarchical_section_title: Mekong / Drainage basin
caption_attribution_description: Melong valley near Chamdo town, downstream of it (conluded from original desciption "South of Chamdo (Qamdo) town, Chamdo County, Tibet")
context_page_description: The Mekong, or Mekong River, is a trans-boundary river in East Asia and Southeast Asia. It is the world's twelfth longest river and the seventh longest in Asia. Its estimated length is 4,350 km, and it drains an area of 795,000 km², discharging 475 km³ of water annually.
  From the Tibetan Plateau the river runs through China, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam. The extreme seasonal variations in flow and the presence of rapids and waterfalls in the Mekong make navigation difficult. Even so, the river is a major trade route between western China and Southeast Asia.
context_section_description: The Mekong Basin can be divided into two parts: the "upper Mekong basin" in Tibet, and the "lower Mekong basin" from Yunnan downstream from China to the South China Sea. From the point where it rises to its mouth, the most precipitous drop in the Mekong occurs in the upper Mekong basin, a stretch of some 2,200 km (1,400 mi). Here, it drops 4,500 metres (14,800 ft) before it enters the lower basin where the borders of Thailand, Laos, China, and Myanmar come together in the Golden Triangle. Downstream from the Golden Triangle, the river flows for a further 2,600 km (1,600 mi) through Laos, Thailand, and Cambodia before entering the South China Sea via a complex delta system in Vietnam.
caption: Mekong River south of Chamdo.
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