Every day, farmer Nguyen Hoai Thuong prays in vain for rain to fall on the cracked dry earth of her garden in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta — the country’s “rice bowl” agricultural heartland.
A blazing month-long heatwave has brought drought, parching the land in Thuong’s home of Ben Tre province, 130 kilometres (80 miles) south of business hub Ho Chi Minh City.