The nation’s rice granary, the Mekong Delta, presents its own spectacular vistas as the spring-summer harvest season gets underway.

While Vietnam’s terraced fields in the northern highlands are all the rage these days, the Mekong Delta offers another version of scenic splendor.

Rice paddy fields in An Giang Province are shining bright yellow these days, signaling the start of the spring-summer harvest.

Driving along the provincial Highway 943 from Long Xuyen Town to Thoai Son District in An Giang, paddy fields stretch out like vast, velvety carpets of brilliant green and yellow.

Yellow rice fields in Long Xuyen Town.

Since early June, photographers from HCMC travel around 240 kilometers, hunting for their own shots of ‘gold’ and capture the daily lives of local farmers who work hard from dawn till dusk.

These days, the rice is harvested mainly by machines, but farmers cannot remain idle at this time, worried as they are about the sudden onset of rain.

A farmer collects rice after the modern combine harvester has worked on a section of the field.

Farmers still spend most of their day on the paddy fields.

With more than 2.2 million people, An Giang is the most populous province in the Mekong Delta.

An aerial view of farmers loading bags of newly-collected rice plants onto a tractor to carry them to the threshing machine.

"I am happy that good weather has made everything easier and faster," a local farmer said.  

About 22 million people or 24 percent of Vietnam's total population live in the Mekong Delta. Farmers in the delta produce more than half of Vietnam’s rice output and contribute an overwhelming 80 percent of the country’s rice exports.

"Watching the golden rice paddies stretching out over the vast space, then walking between them and witnessing the hardship of local farmers in the field have left unforgettable impressions on me during this trip to An Giang," said Ho Chi Minh City-based photographer Huynh Van Thai.

"If you have no chance to head up north to admire the golden season of rice terraced fields in the northern mountainous region in September and October, don’t miss ripened and ripening paddy fields in the south with their golden glow in June," Thai said.

Photos by Huynh Van Thai