For hundreds of years, the Mekong River has been a vital passageway for people and goods. Today, the Mekong is still an essential means of transportation for many of the people living in the region and plays an increasingly important role in international trade and tourism. For example in Viet Nam, roughly 73% of cargo tonnage and about 27% of passengers travel by water annually.
Within the Lower Mekong Basin (LMB), the Mekong River and its major tributaries are navigable during the high-water season (about eight months of the year), with the exception of a 14-km section just north of the border between Cambodia and the Lao PDR – the impassable Khone Falls.