This morning surprised me. Having gone down to get my free breakfast (at my amazing homestay), I looked out of the entrance door and found this: water had reached the homestay's gates.
Flood!
The space beyond the tree is the An Cuu River. I remember, three weeks ago or so, it heavily rained in Hue and I noted that the river level was only 50cm lower than the street. I thought it was worth noting but, on November 25, 2024, water filled the street and was nearly knee-deep at some places. 200 meters away from the homestay, next to An Dinh Palace, it was deeper than the knees so eventually my underwear got soaked. 😃
But before I start sharing things, let me shortly explain what's happening here so as not to mislead people: some parts of the embankments and some adjacent alleys got flooded but most Hue streets are free of water and life goes on normally.
There were no storms, just an endless row of gloomy rainy days. It's not cold here, roughly +26 in the afternoon and +23 at night so the weather is comfortable to sometimes walk in the water.
But the situation is alarming. Vietnamese news agencies reported that 291.000 schoolchildren were asked to stay home in Thua Thien-Hue Province "amid flood threat".
Nothing critical happened in the neighborhood of my homestay but it's worrying since it's only one step away from flooding the ground floors of houses which would mean serious financial losses.
You can think: "There is no downpour in the images, probably, the whole thing had ended". Alas, this is not correct. After I returned from the morning walk, it started heavily raining. A LOT.
So, yeah, people celebrating life. You never know what will happen next so better to enjoy the present moment which the local people were doing on November 25, 2024.
An unexpected day off for kids and some adults. A great opportunity to spend time with the family.
Some guys even set up a fishing net along the street (no photo), to fence away the river and collect trapped fish.
Here, it is well visible: the embankment and the river became a single whole.
The current of the river is not strong and no current in the street so no one is carried away but the locals warned me a couple of times not to accidentally wander into the part of the street that is actually a river. 😄
I returned to the homestay in the afternoon and fell asleep when it started heavily raining. I returned to the streets around 4 p.m. when it was drizzling again. Headed to An Dinh Palace.
An Dinh Palace's central gate.
The same place. My favorite part of Hue!
The old gate. Venice of the East. 😀
I couldn't help asking consent for taking images here and there and enjoyed the reaction of people. 😀
The girl didn't want for some reason but I took an image of her and him on my way back - probably, the guy convinced her.
Knee-deep, you see. There were deeper places on the street buy people preferred keeping their underwear dry.
These guys looked so cool so I couldn't pass by them without asking for a picture.
My photo radar received a signal from these kids that they didn't mind posing for me.
And, here, I was asked to photograph:
My amazing walk was interrupted by the fact that something fogged up inside my camera 😁 I hurried back to the homestay and discovered it was the back (inner!) glass of my 50mm lens, fogged up. Unmounted the lens and it got dry without my help. But it was a wake-up call - I need to be more careful with the camera during the rain.
Let's see what happens tomorrow! 😎 Thanks for stopping by!
More Southeast Asian adventures to come, stay tuned! Check out my previous posts on my personal Worldmappin map.
I took these images with a Nikkor 50mm f/1.8G on a full-frame DSLR Nikon D750 on November 25, 2024, in Hue, Vietnam.