The Mekong River with Sue Perkins

Sue’s trip begins in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta, where she joins ‘queen of the noodle’ Si Hei at the delta’s largest floating market – a centre of commerce for centuries. But as Vietnam’s economy begins to flow faster than the river, life is changing. Up-river, Sue crosses into Cambodia, still tainted by Pol Pot’s terrible genocide, and immerses herself in an extraordinary village of homes on a lake.

The most emotional leg of her journey. Having met people struggling to recover from the legacy of the Khmer Rouge, animal-lover Sue goes on a disturbing raid with the Wildlife Rapid Response Rescue team to find trafficked wild animals and bush meat. Upstream brings happier encounters as she forms a deep bond with women of the Krung tribe, who live in Ratanakiri’s remote highlands.

Sue begins in Laos, one of the Mekong’s poorest nations, where its people are turning to tourism for income. Next, she visits Luang Prabang, considered the home of more monks than anywhere else in Asia, and the problematic Xayaburi hydroelectric dam. Will industrialization here do more harm than good? Finally, she stops at a glitzy casino built for Chinese VIPs for whom gambling is banned at home.

In this final episode, Sue finds out how modernity is threatening tradition in China. Here, change is sweeping through faster than in any other Mekong nation. In Xishuangbanna, she discovers a once-remote region now booming with tourism – a must-visit for China’s burgeoning middle class. Her journey ends in Baisha, under the shadow of the Himalayas, a region famous for botanists and herbalists.