Where water is gold 
In the neighboring Binh Thuan Province, people are relying on water from wells they dug up recently.
65-year-old Le Thi Kien said she and three other families share a well but they have almost depleted it and now the water near the bottom is not very clean.
“We know the water is not very safe, but it's okay. I’ve never seen such a bad drought.”
Nguyen Van Sang, a commune officer, said the water is barely enough for cooking and washing. 
If they want more water, they have to buy from a town 15 kilometers away at around VND50,000 a cubic meter, nearly ten times the official prices.
It’s a sellers’ market these days. At least two water plants in the province have stopped working as their supplying streams dried out.
In the Central Highlands provinces of Lam Dong and Dak Lak, the water level at all streams and reservoirs has fallen below last year’s lowest point.
Coffee farmers are afraid that tens of thousands of hectares will die.
Digging deep for water is the only way to partly deal with the dire solution in the drought-htt provinces.
Khanh Hoa Province, which includes the famous resort town Nha Trang, has approved a fund of VND25 billion, or nearly US$1 million, to help locals dig wells and switch to new crops that can survive the lack of water.
Dak Lak and Binh Thuan said they will ask state-run Electricity of Vietnam to release water from hydropower dams in the area to alleviate the problem.