October is rainy season in central Vietnam. This is what happens when you try to fit too many regions into one fell travel swoop; we wound up in shoulder season everywhere. While it’s not the ideal time for travel, it does have its advantages : fewer tourists, less burning, cooler weather. However, I thought typhoon season in Vietnam would be largely over by late October and we’d only get the typical afternoon showers kind of rain. Wrong.
Not to mention, I’d gotten lazy keeping up on the news in the past couple of weeks. I’m sure you understand. There’s a threat of disaster looming in the US and I’d like to keep some semblance of sanity. I was trying to find the sweet spot between blissfully and woefully ignorant.
When we were in South Korea, we were advised to download their national emergency app to stay informed. My phone was beeping several times a day with warnings, usually fairly benign, but often darkly amusing as North Korea had once again started sending poop balloons to their neighbor. I couldn’t wait to delete that damn app. Some emergencies can be safely ignored.
All was well for the first couple of days in Hoi An. Sure there was rain in the forecast, but so it goes, we’re adaptable. Then one morning at breakfast I checked the radar. What’s that menacing dark red swirl coming straight at us? Oh damn, it was Typhoon Tra Mi, which had caused so much damage in the Philippines, and the hotel we were staying at was just off the beach. Damn. I cursed our choice to stay on the beach and not further inland, in the old town.
But wait, Tra Mi was downgraded to a tropical storm! But wait, it’s been upgraded again! And so went the day, checking and rechecking the news. Weather worrying. The airport shut down, alerts were sent out. Our hotel said if it got bad, trees would be downed, but that was it. And the beach would be safer than inland. All the coastal construction was new and solid, whereas housing stock in the UNESCO city center was older and wedged between two rivers. My fears were somewhat assuaged but I stayed on high alert. It would be our first typhoon after all, I didn’t know how much complacency I could afford.
I slept fitfully, waking up often, listening to the wind and rain. And it occurred to me then that this felt like election night, 2016. Another menacing dark red swirl, another sense of helpless foreboding. What kind of world would we wake up to? Back then, I was the only person I knew who thought Trump would win. He was a joke, but a seriously dark and unfunny one. 2020 didn’t faze me. I was quite certain that the media was making more of a horse race out of the election than was warranted. But he and his deplorable minions are back, like a mutated virus, more virulent than ever. And like this storm, the projections are untrustworthy.
The typhoon weakened in the night and then deflected when it hit land, turning north. We woke up to some debris and mild flooding.* The old town was largely spared as well.
One looming storm down, one to go. May the forecasts be wildly underestimating the upcoming blue tidal wave.
Maer
*Which is not to say there wasn’t any damage. Sadly, four lives were lost in the flooding in rural areas further to north.
The Let's Get Lost Game 