Most commercial trade along the Mekong is conducted at local town and village markets. These serve in many ways both as an
economic and a community centre of activity. All manner of goods, live and otherwise, are brought for sale overland by lorry,
bus or even bicycle, and also trafficked across and along the river, and there are also the water markets of the Mekong Delta.
Markets are also popular eating havens.

“Markets are also a good place to start finding out about a country’s population and economy - what people eat, what they grow,
what they cook. My first time in Cambodia, just after the peace with the Khmer Rouge, you could see the market didn’t have
many things, and that goods were mostly imported from Thailand, but after a few years the markets have changed, and people
are growing and selling their own local fruits and vegetables. Modes of transport have changed as well – where the river was
mainly used to carry goods, there are now highways. In Yunnan, mules continue to cart goods to market, as they have for over a
thousand years. Transporting goods over the river is more difficult in the highlands, and I’ve seen people use ropes and pulleys to
get themselves and their wares from bank to bank.”