The flood

Making it to Phong Nha, a day later though, was nice. Also because of the warning for typhoon Nari, which should hit the coast that day. We checked in the Phong Nha farmstay - run by a Vietnamese Australian couple. 2 weeks ago another typhoon hit the Hotel, they had to shut down for a while. Still there were some after effects of this typhoon, like no electricity and hot water. We didn’t mind because the staff was really nice and the rooms were so comfortable. The next day we did a tour to the paradise cave (the biggest dry cave in Asia)and the jungle around the cave (has a lot of war history). It was raining really hard so we couldn’t do a hike in the forest. After all it was really interesting and beautiful to watch.

On the way back to the farmstay we noticed that the river became a lot bigger and some streets were flooded. A bit scared to see that, we hoped that the farmstay is far enough away to not be flooded.

In the night the wind was getting so strong and it rained heavily that we could hardly sleep.We woke up the following morning and found the entire area under about 2-3 meters of water. “luckily” the farmstay was on a little hill so the water only reached the entrance. During the day the water was rising and we started to move all the bikes on higher ground and shifted beds, generator, fridges and documents from the farmstay to the first floor.

As there was nothing to do anymore then watch the water rising, we opened some beers and had some nice chats with the other guests. In the eve the water stopped rising (a few centimeters from the ground floor, which still meant a rise of 1,5 meter from the moment we woke up that morning) and retreated the rest of the day.