Discounted airline flight tickets and lowest airfare to destinations of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. Vietnam Sunshine Travel offers the selection of various airlines with great savings airfare on one way air ticket, round trip air ticket with online flight booking. Easy to use, friendly and save.
Mekong Delta
History
The Mekong Delta was likely inhabited long since prehistory; the empire
of Funan and later Chenla maintained a presence in the Mekong Delta for
centuries. Archaeological discoveries at Oc Eo and other Funan sites
shows that the area was an important part of the Funan Kingdom, bustling
with trading ports and canals as early as in the first century C.E. and
extensive human settlement in the region may have gone back as far as
the 4th century B.C.E.
The region was known as Khmer Krom (lower Khmer, or lower Cambodia) to
the Khmer Empire, which likely maintained settlements there centuries
before its rise in the 11th and 12th centuries. The kingdom of Champa,
though mainly based along the coast of the South China Sea, is known to
have expanded west into the Mekong Delta, seizing control of Prey Nokor
(the precursor to modern-day Ho Chi Minh City) by the end of the 13th
century. Author Nghia M. Vo suggests that a Cham presence may indeed
have existed in the area prior to Khmer occupation.
Beginning in the 1620s, Khmer king Chey Chettha II (1618-1628) allowed
the Vietnamese to settle in the area, and to set up a custom house at
Prey Nokor, which they colloquially referred to as Sài Gòn. The
increasing waves of Vietnamese settlers which followed overwhelmed the
Khmer kingdom—weakened as it was due to war with Thailand—and slowly
Vietnamized the area. During the late 17th century, Mac Cuu, a Chinese
anti-Qing general, began to expand Vietnamese and Chinese settlements
deeper into Khmer lands, and in 1691, Prey Nokor was occupied by the
Vietnamese.
Nguyễn Hữu Cảnh, a Vietnamese noble, was sent by the Nguyễn Lords of Huế
by sea in 1698 to establish Vietnamese administrative structures in the
area. This act formally detached the Mekong Delta from Cambodia,
placing the region firmly under Vietnamese administrative control.
Cambodia was cut off from access to the South China Sea, and trade
through the area was possible only with Vietnamese permission.[2] During
the Tay Son wars and the subsequent Nguyễn Dynasty, Vietnam's
boundaries were pushed as far as the Cape of Ca Mau. In 1802, Nguyễn Ánh
crowned himself emperor Gia Long and unified all the territories
comprising modern Vietnam, including the Mekong Delta.
Upon the conclusion of the Cochinchina Campaign in the 1860s, the area
became Cochinchina, France's first colony in Vietnam, and later, part of
French Indochina. Beginning during the French colonial period, the
French patrolled and fought on the waterways of the Mekong Delta region
with their Divisions navales d'assaut (Dinassaut), a tactic which lasted
throughout the First Indochina War, and was later employed by the US
Navy Mobile Riverine Force. During the Vietnam War—also referred to as
the Second Indochina War—the Delta region saw savage fighting between
Viet Cong (NLF) guerrillas and units of the United States Navy's swift
boats and hovercrafts (PACVs).
Following independence from France, the Mekong Delta was part of the
Republic of Vietnam and eventually the country of Vietnam. In the 1970s,
the Khmer Rouge regime attacked Vietnam in an attempt to reconquer the
Delta region. This campaign precipitated the Vietnamese invasion of
Cambodia and subsequent downfall of the Khmer Rouge.
Geography
The Mekong Delta, as a region, lies immediately to the west of Ho Chi
Minh City, roughly forming a triangle stretching from Mỹ Tho in the east
to Châu Đốc and Hà Tiên in the northwest, down to Cà Mau and the South
China Sea at the southernmost tip of Vietnam, and including the island
of Phú Quốc.
The Mekong Delta region of Vietnam displays a variety of physical
landscapes, ranging from mountains and highlands to the north and west
to broad, flat flood plains in the south. This diversity of terrain was
largely the product of tectonic uplift and folding brought about by the
collision of the Indian and Eurasian tectonic plates about 50 million
years ago. The soil of the lower Delta consists mainly of sediment from
the Mekong and its tributaries, deposited over millions of years as the
river changed its course due to the flatness of the low-lying terrain.
Climate
Being a low-lying coastal region, the Mekong Delta is particularly
susceptible to floods resulting from rises in sea level due to climate
change. The Climate Change Research Institute at Can Tho University, in
studying the possible consequences of climate change, has predicted
that, besides suffering from drought brought on by seasonal decrease in
rainfall, many provinces in the Mekong Delta will be flooded by the year
2030. The most serious cases are predicted to be the provinces of Ben
Tre and Long An, of which 51% and 49%, respectively, are expected to be
flooded if sea levels rise by 1 meter.
 |
Hotels
Testimonials
(click here to view more)
