The plan was to travel from Ha Long Bay (multi modal: via boat, then bus, then plane then bus) to get to Hue. Except nature intervened, in the form of the Tropical Depression Fengshen. Said natural event deposited something on the order of 68 INCHES of rain over 24 hours, in the province of Hue (same name as the town) from 10/25-10/28. From the local news, the Hu’o’ng River had reached 4.93 meters, exceeding Level 3 flood alert by 1.43 meters. Mind you, this area has a twice yearly monsoon season. And flooding itself is not uncommon. But the level of flooding is one of those once in a century varieties, Trinh told us it exceeded the recent record set in 1966. In some places over 2 meters high in homes.
In fact this necessitated a detour to Da Nang instead of Hue as the streets were still under water. And the water nearly got up to into the lobby of the hotel here in Hue. Evidently there were several people who died in the flood and the hotels had to be evacuated. By yesterday morning, the waters were receding and we were able to make it here.
There is municipal garbage but the people here just start themselves with street, park and sidewalk cleanup, as the mud is like cement if left to dry. We spoke to other tourists who were here a day before us and spoke of clothing shops where they were wringing out the clothes, and groceries who had to discard a lot of food. Rice fields are flooded and there may not be a winter crop this year. There is a large community effort to clean the streets, parks and more. Our city guide was cleaning out one of the classrooms in his childrens’ school before our tour.
All very sobering. We did get to see the imperial palace which was still partially impacted but much better. As it is situated in the bed of the Perfume River, this is not surprising. More on that in the next post.
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