Tourists in Vietnam Venture Out Again -

Tourists in Vietnam Venture Out Again
Julian Abram Wainwright/European Pressphoto Agency

Floodwater remained in the town of Hoi An in the aftermath of Typhoon Ketsana on Thursday. More Photos >
Published: October 1, 2009

HOI AN, Vietnam — The chest-high waters in this carefully preserved little town are receding, and as the roads dry they are filling up again with tourists who had been trapped in their hotels.
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Julian Abram Wainwright/European Pressphoto Agency

A woman walked onto a flooded road in Hoi An on Thursday. More Photos »

“We were in our room for three days,” said Sandra Hudspith, 62, a sociologist from Australia. “All we had to eat was noodles, and if I never see another noodle again, I’ll be happy.”

Tony Boyle, also from Australia, peered into shops where people were using brooms and mops to sweep out the muck the flood left behind. “You feel ghoulish, like you shouldn’t be here,” he said. “But they need the money. They’re lovely, lovely people.”

This old trading town, which is now one of the country’s premier tourist attractions, was one of the hardest hit areas in the typhoon that battered central Vietnam two days ago, killing 92 people by the latest count.

The storm, Typhoon Ketsana, also killed 277 people in the Philippines and 14 in Cambodia, and more storms were forecast for the Philippines. Typhoon Parma, with winds gusting up to 130 miles per hour, was expected to make landfall on Saturday north of Manila, and heavy rains had already begun in some parts of the country on Thursday evening. The authorities warned of mudslides and heavy flooding, and said the strength of the storm could surpass that of Ketsana, which last week caused Manila’s worst flooding in four decades.

Low-lying parts of Hoi An’s old town, with its mustard yellow walls and curved tile roofs, remained flooded Thursday, and some people were still trapped on upper floors.

Small wood skiffs piled high with produce delivered food and water to them. Some boatmen engaged in what the people of Hoi An have learned to excel at — tourism — ferrying visitors up and down the flooded streets for a look.

“Come visit our gallery!” called Hoang Thi Thao from the flooded Thanh Lich Gallery to a passing skiff as she washed down her muddied walls. “Maybe tomorrow.”

In the To To Boutique, on slightly higher ground, the bottom shelves were empty where bolts of cloth had been removed up to the flood’s high-water mark. A male mannequin stood at the front of the shop, naked from the chest down. Its trousers had been removed and its shirt had been tied at the chest, where the rising water stopped. Le Thi Ngoc Anh, 35, the shop owner, said she would probably put its pants back on tomorrow.

Around the corner in another clothing shop, the owner, Do Thi Nga, 47, argued with a tour guide who had come to pick up clothing ordered by her clients. The flood had stopped the work of the tailors, and the tourists were leaving now after making a two-thirds down payment. “I don’t know what I’m going to do,” said the tour guide, Nguyen Thi Ngoc Phuong, as she climbed back onto her bicycle.

Another shop nearby was a shambles, with broken crockery and soaked piles of clothing lying around. “We’ve lost everything, a hundred percent,” cried the owner, Ha Thi De, 55, her lips quivering, as she collected muddy bits of broken crockery and dumped them into a bucket. Her husband sat on a plastic stool at the open shop front, staring into the street. “He’s helping me to clean up,” Ms. De said.

Bit by bit, Hoi An was returning to life as it has come to know it. The sun was shining, and groups of tourists ambled down the streets with cameras and shopping bags.

A former trading town that was one of the country’s main ports in precolonial times, and then a ruin during and after the Vietnam War, Hoi An has been turned into a tourism showpiece. It was designated a World Heritage Site by Unesco in 1999, and local officials project that 1.2 million tourists will visit it this year and that the number will more than double over the next six years. Provincial officials have begun to worry that it is all happening too fast. The Quang Nam Provincial Peoples Committee issued a report recently saying development was threatening to overwhelm the character of the town.

In the Milan fabric shop, which also sells the richly filled moon cakes of the harvest festival, Vuong Huu Khoi, 55, said his family had retreated with its merchandise to the second floor, eating some of the cakes to get through the flood.

The slow pace of business gave him a chance to light a cigarette and consider what his town had become. “They used to call it the forgotten town,” said Mr. Khoi, who was born here and left only to fight in the 1970s as a soldier for South Vietnam.

Now, this is the place visitors come to see the real unspoiled Vietnam.