Week 25 - Flooding in Hoi An & Singapore Airlines come to my rescue!

Hello everybody, this week has been the most dramatic week of my time here in Vietnam, and possibly the most dramatic week of my life since I left England in August 2007! Now that's a big claim to make, considering I have been through a Romanian (Transylvania) winter, visited the Swiss Alps, and competed in a Triathlon here in Vietnam in the past 13 months. Still, the events of this week have kept me occupied for entirely new reasons...

...firstly, I will get to telling you all about how close I came to be returning home next week, but first I must try my best to convey the picture that surrounds me here in Hoi An, where we have had the first floods of the rainy season. The pictures will tell the story...

I have never personally been in a place that actually flooded, so forgive my dramatic descriptions of the floods here this week. Heavy rains last weekend left the river overlapping the footpaths by the river, but after 2 more days of intense rain, the old town, was almost swimming under water, see picture blow, the contrast between last week, and this week's flooding...

...and locals had already begun to use boats just to get out of their homes, and travel around the affected streets. People were telling stories about how they had been forced to rush to move everything they had up stairs (if the had an upstairs), and my colleagues were telling me how they would be unable to go home, as the boats that carry them and their motorbikes across the river were not able to load up anymore... It took me a little while to actually make it to the river in daylight to see the extent of the problem, but the speed of the flood was what was so surprising. I had been at the river side Thursday morning, but by Thursday evening the markets were completely flooded and the river had risen to well above the 1 metre and covered the ground.. entire streets had begun to disappear.... see below...

As the pictures show, life here gets pretty tough with the water level stranding people in their homes, though I guess it's a fair excuse why you can't get to work in the morning! Still, the people of Hoi An have taken this in their stride with the kind of acceptance and resilience that puts most of us to shame... I can honestly say I'll never complain about it raining so much in Manchester (and that's a lot of rain!!!) after seeing the conditions here during rainy season... despite the tough conditions and serious inconvenience caused by the flood, the locals continue with life as though the flood hasn't happened, and you'll still see plenty of smiling faces around the place, non more so than the old ladies giving tourists boat rides through the flood water... see below...

Heavy rains will continue to batter this part of Vietnam, often made worse by the storms in the China Sea, yet this was all part of the experience that I 'signed up' for as I wanted to experience living through a 'rainy season' such as the one here. The more serious issues of flooding are that of the water-born diseases, and there have been plenty parts of this town, where it is clear sewage water has mixed with the rain water, and piles of garbage float by, not a pretty site, but a common one! I'll leave this part of the week's events by showing a few more pictures from Hoi An this week....

To the other big event of the week now, and here is where I must do a little bit of free advertising for Singapore Airlines... I have no problem singing their praises, because without them, I would be packing my bags right now, in preparation for coming home in just 5 days. Let me explain... My 6 months is actually up this week, and my visa is due to expire, so my plan was to extend my visa, and then extend my flights by one month to November... I was told I could change the date of my flight for free, just once! When I called to extend the flight, I was informed that my ticket had a 6 month expiry date, meaning I could not extend it past October 25th... 'Oh bugger'... was the more polite form of what I was thinking right then. How could I possibly finish my work in less than a week?, and was I to forget the chance to go and work in one of the government hospitals in Da Nang before I left?, not to forget the chance to say goodbye to people!

The Singapore Airlines office in Saigon (who were my real saviours) confirmed this was the case, and I should speak to my travel agent in UK, and the UK based Singapore Airlines office.. My travel agent, (Trailfinders) told me there was nothing I could do, and this rule was written in my contract with them... hmm...., but the Manchester based Singapore Airline office, told me they would need 48 hours to see if they could let me extend my ticket.. ( typical of UK based call centres) the guy was nice enough, but the "please call back" line did not fill me with confidence. The Saigon office then stepped in and emailed me to say they had contacted the London office to plead my case! (so I now had 3 different airline offices on the case). The very next day I received a call from the Saigon office to inform me of the good news that for a mere £132 I could extend my ticket to December 31st... the only catch was that I could only fly home between December 24-31st! That's a big catch considering my Gran's birthday is December 24th! Still, I will be home on Xmas day, and could I ask for more than that?? No, Of course not! So I will be home on December 25th... (so don't think you can strike me off your Christmas card list this year!) I promised Singapore Airlines I would give them some hefty praise so here's a picture for them.. and I would say this anyway, their service is the best I have ever had on long distance flights! Thanks Singapore Airlines!

Regards form Vietnam

Dan