They don't know what the next day will bring or what the next meal will comprise. More than 1 million people have lost homes, lands, livestock, property or relatives in the two countries. About 350,000 homes have been inundated in the four Vietnamese Delta provinces of An Giang, Dong Thap, Long An and Kien Giang. Meteorologists say nearly half the provinces are submerged, with water levels at or above those of 1996, when floods killed 217 people. People have taken shelter on earthen dikes or alongside roads built on higher ground.
Home is a shanty of plastic tarp and bamboo poles.
Throughout the province, a few rooftops and telephone poles jut above the water. But for the most part, the flooded rice paddies resemble vast lakes shimmering into the horizon. Along a highway leading north from Dong Thap's provincial capital of Cao Lanh, homeless families have set up threadbare encampments beside the road. They are all she salvaged from her house lying just beyond the road, she said, pointing to its weathered roof peeking above the flood. The crisis has forced neighbor to reach out to neighbor.