As we entered hour 14 of what would end up to be about two straight days of downpour – preceded and followed by more showers – my unshakably blasé coworkers insisted that nothing was out of the ordinary. Yes, the drains had reached their limits hours ago, yes, we couldn’t cross the street to get to the closest café for lunch, yes, that woman was holding her baby above her head to keep it out of the water, but what else would a storm look like?
As my friend who hadn’t been able to escape her apartment watched the water creeping into all the shops on her street and heard the ceramic statute in front of her door shatter under the weight of the deluge, her landlady assured her it was all binh thuong: fine, normal, not exciting.
But the news was on our side. By the end of the weekend, reports were that the floods that hit the city were the heaviest in more than two decades. We’d received four times more rain in a week than the average for the whole month of November. About 20 people in Hanoi, and 120 internationally, were killed. With roads closed and almost 650,000 acres of cropland under water, produce was running out and food prices were quadrupling.
To live through all of that with no idea what was going on and everyone telling you it’s just a standard rainy day is an absurd adventure. Cars were creating wakes like boats before noon, motorbikes were up to their handlebars in water an hour later, and my boss sent an email that said maybe employees who had children to pick up could leave the office at 4:30.
Wading almost a mile home in the dark that evening, my housemate (Tim the snake-eating Canadian) and I tried not to identify all the soft, squishy objects getting caught in our sandals. Since our first floor didn’t flood overnight as expected, we felt gypped of the action and sloshed out again the next day to find our neighborhood lake severely overflowed and people spear fishing on the sidewalks. Take that, food shortages.
By the following night, I was able to get cocktails with the friend who’d been trapped inside by submerged broken glass. We were celebrating seeing the sidewalk again.
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4 comments:
Alison, if you could spear me a fish from the sidewalk that would be awesome.
I hope Scott brought you back a finely tailored suit, not to mention a beer to chug.
Honestly, talk about culture shock - just the opposite of our "chicken little." Glad there were still cocktails to be poured!
Ok, I know I said that I set things up so I get email alerts about updates to this blog, but I still find myself checking it on a regular basis. We are rapidly approaching 1 month since the last post. This can not, and will not stand. Update me.
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