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A wild river is his everyday life. Captain Chanthi, 49, is a captain on the Nam Ou in the north of Laos. His water taxi connects villages and small market towns in an archaically beautiful but very poor region of South East Asia. Untamed and still virtually untouched by the modern age, the Nam Ou wends it way through the remote mountainous jungle. After 420 kilometres it then flows into the Mekong at Luang Prabang, the former royal city of Laos. Razor-sharp rocks, rapids, shoals - no-one knows them better than Captain Chanthi. He even travels on the river in the rainy season when the Nam Ou is really torrential. For it is then that the most important event in the region takes place, the great boat race in Luang Prabang; many people want to see it, and Chanthi finds enough passengers. Increasingly, however, this business is being taken over by modern speedboats and, more recently, busses. Not long ago a few roads were built in the remote north. Laos, the long isolated socialist country, is now geared to opening up, to market economy and modernisation. The water taxi is still operating. But for how much longer? The film accompanies Captain Chanthi on a 3-day journey to Luang Prabang at the time of the boat race. It also portrays some of his passengers: a pensive mountain farmer, a young woman who is defusing blind shells from the Vietnam war at the river and the village chieftain Xieng La, who distils spirits and who wants to win the boat race with his team of strong men.