South Vietnam covers the Mekong Delta,  the extreme southern end of the Mekong River, and the area around Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon), Vietnam. As all deltas, it receives the bounty of the siltation from the upper Mekong, and as such is a very rich and lush area, covered with rice fields. It produces about half of the total of Vietnam's agricultural output (in fact the delta produces more rice than Korea and Japan altogether), and is the place for timeless sceneries of farmers planting or harvesting rice.

The Mekong splits in Cambodia into two main rivers, the Bassac (Hậu Giang) and the First river (Tiền Giang), then in Vietnam into a more complex system, creating a maze of small canals, rivers and arroyos interspersed with villages and floating markets. Life in the Mekong Delta revolves much around the river, and all the villages are often accessible by river rather than by road