Every year, monsoon season in South East Asia brings heavy rains and seasonal floods are common.

In 2008, however, hundreds of people in Vietnam and Laos were killed by flash floods triggered by heavy rain as well as rising level of the Mekong River.

Northern Vietnam has been heavily affected by remnants of a tropical storm in August, where the worst flood in decades and killing at least 130 people. More flash floods and landslides followed due to heavy rain, killing tens of people.

According to government reports, rains are still expected in northern Vietnam that could cause more floods.

Also in August in landlocked Laos, the Mekong River hit its highest level in at least 100 years after several months of unusually heavy rain. Four people have been killed in flooding and landslides.

Cambodia, whose capital Phnom Penh sits right on the bank of the Mekong, is also bracing for major flooding.

The 4,350km-long (2,700 miles) Mekong runs through six countries, starting from Tibet and reaching the South China Sea via rice-rich southern Vietnam.

The Mekong River Commission, based in Laos, said the river from northern Thailand to central Cambodia was higher than it was in 2000, when the worst floods in four decades struck southern Vietnam.

Vietnam government said at the end of August 2008 it has approved a programme to spend $145 million between now and 2010 to build dykes and relocate 33,000 families of rice farmers from areas threatened by seasonal flooding in the Mekong.