Conditions are spartan on Dennis Carson's Indochina rubber plantation during a dusty dry monsoon. The latest boat upriver brings Carson (Clark Gable) an unwelcome guest: Vantine (Jean Harlow), a floozy from Saigon, hoping to evade the police by a stay upcountry. But Carson, initially uninterested, soon succumbs to Vantine's ostentatious charms...until the arrival of surveyor Gary Willis (Gene Raymond), ill with malaria, and his refined but sensuous wife Barbara (Mary Astor). Now the rains begin, and passion flows like water...