In Vietnam’s Mekong Delta, the lure of moving to the city grows even stronger amid climate shocks

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The lure of the city has always been strong for the poor in Vietnam's Mekong Delta

CAN THO, Vietnam — Dao Bao Tran and her brother Do Hoang Trung, 11-year-old twins growing up on a rickety houseboat in the Mekong Delta, have dreams. Tran loves K-pop, watches videos at night to learn Korean and would love to visit Seoul. Trung wants to be a singer.

But their hopes are “unrealistic,” said Trung: “I know I’ll end up going to the city to try and make a living."

Such dreams have a way of dissipating in southern Vietnam's Mekong, one of the most climate-vulnerable regions in the world.

For the poor, the future is especially uncertain. A U.N. climate change report in 2022 warned there will be more floods in the wet season and drought in the dry season. Unsustainable extraction of groundwater and sand for construction have made matters worse. And with rising seas gnawing away at its southern edge and dams hemming the Mekong River upstream, farming in the fertile delta is getting harder. Its contribution to Vietnam’s GDP has dropped from 27% in 1990 to less than 18% in 2019, according to a 2020 report by the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry.

The call of the city, where factory jobs promise better salaries, is often too hard to resist for the region’s 17 million inhabitants.

The twins' single mother, Do Thi Son Ca, left to seek work in Ho Chi Minh City soon after her children were born. She left them with her mother, 59-year-old Nguyen Thi Thuy. Unable to afford rent on land, the small family has lived on a small houseboat ever since.

Thuy rents a smaller boat to sell meat and bean buns at the Cai Rang floating market, the largest of its kind in the Mekong Delta. She rises well before dawn to steam the buns in a metal