Len — Hoi An Flood, Japanese Bridge

“Yes­ter­day was such an exhaust­ing day. I was so wor­ried about my boat and I could not sleep. I stayed up the whole night to pro­tect my boat, oth­er­wise, the wind would blow it away. If I had just left it out­side with a rope, the wind would have destroyed the rope. The wind was super strong.”

It was a beau­ti­ful sun­ny day the morn­ing after Typhoon Molave, the worst to hit Viet­nam since 2017. We explored the flood­ed street of Hoi An with Len, in her boat. On nor­mal days, where she sits in her boat would be a street. Today, it’s part of the Thu Bon River.

“I have been work­ing on boats for 35 years. Before tourism start­ed in Hoi An, I used to be a fish­er­man, now I am run­ning boat rides for tourists. In the past, there were many tourists, this year, it is most­ly dead.”

“We are used to flood­ing. Peo­ple in the old days, they could pre­dict storms com­ing by the wind, espe­cial­ly those who worked on the ocean. Now, we have weath­er fore­casts, informed by the local gov­ern­ment. They dri­ve their vehi­cles around and broad­cast the infor­ma­tion from a speaker.”

Len, 57 years old
Hoi An, Viet­nam
Octo­ber 2020