BANGKOK -- It is baking hot in the mid-afternoon just outside Laos' capital, Vientiane. Won, a local rice farmer, looks up at the cloudless sky. It should be humid and raining, but so far in June, this area close to the Mekong River, which separates Laos from Thailand, has only seen desultory showers every few days. Won has already planted rice on her 6 hectares of paddies, but just down the road other fields lay fallow, waiting for regular downpours that the rice crops need.
"We have some irrigation water but the water levels are much lower than last year, when the rain started earlier," she told the Nikkei Asian Review. "If rain doesn't come in July, I will let the rice die." Won said that the irrigation water will only last for a few weeks.
