Tuân & his Dogs — Hoi An Flood

Tuân enters his house via the upstairs win­dow dur­ing the Octo­ber 2020 floods in Hoi An, Vietnam.

After try­ing unsuc­cess­ful­ly to enter the house from the sub­merged ground lev­el door, his fam­i­ly stopped by in a boat and helped him get onto the awning with his dogs.

“I was get­ting back home after buy­ing some food and tak­ing the dogs out so they could go to the toi­let. I had to guide them to swim oth­er­wise, they would get trapped in the strong cur­rent. They did not want to go to the toi­let in the house, they are not pup­pies any­more so they are smarter. They want to run and pee at the same time.”

“These boys were born when the Coro­n­avirus start­ed. So his name is Coro and that guy is Vina.”

Tuân’s house has always caught my eye and is one of my favorite build­ings in Hoi An. We asked him a bit about its history.

“This house is more than 170 years old. There have been 4 gen­er­a­tions liv­ing in this house. My ances­tor was Hoa (a Viet­namese eth­nic group orig­i­nat­ing in Chi­na). Dur­ing the Nguyen dynasty, Viet peo­ple couldn’t live here. All the spe­cial wood hous­es are the house that the Hoa used to live in.”

We returned to see Tuân and give him his pho­tos after the flood reced­ed. He want­ed to ensure Coro and Vina were in the pho­to with him.