Our flight into Vietnam from Bangkok was smooth and enjoyable - first time flying Emirates! As we taxied along the runway we were thinking of nothing more than a quick progression through the airport, which after all was for a fairly small city, and a short taxi ride to our comfy hotel.

Of course, it didn’t work out that way.

As we descended the stairs to Immigration, we became aware of people. Lots of people. Lots and lots of people. Way more than you would expect for such an airport - the third biggest in Vietnam - late in the evening on a Friday night. Amidst the general confusion a long, serpent-like queue formed, coiling around upon itself with tens more people adding to its length

every minute. And no real movement in sight. Half the Immigration desks were empty and the others seemed to be frozen.

It looked like we were going to be there for hours.

Turns out that the storm had closed several other airports so all their flights had been diverted to Da Nang.

After employing every British trick in the book - namely various combinations of tutting, shaking our heads and muttering “unbelievable” under our breath - we realised we would have to go nuclear.

So we got the attention of an official and made out that R was pregnant (after debriefing E and e to not blow our cover due to surprise), and couldn’t stand for long.

Didn’t work.

But apparently what would have worked was good ol’ fashioned greasing-the-palm corruption. As the serpent gradually ground forward, foot by foot, person by person, and the end became in sight, if not within reaching distance, we became aware that a few people who had been around us were exchanging words with an official and then being ferried forward, through the desks and to the Nirvana of the baggage carousel.

But how?

The answer gradually filtered through the airport grapevine: 20 dollars each. That’s how. Sadly for us we didn’t have $80 to hand, so therefore had to continue waiting, but plenty of people did take advantage of the unofficial ‘fast track’ option, including a jammy young Canadian guy we had been chatting to for a while before joining the never-ending queue.

Once we finally got to the Immigration desk - we went through in pairs - the young chap barely glanced at our passports (didn’t ask to see our visas) before stamping them and waving us through. Hurrah! At last! We quickly gathered our rucksacks and organised a taxi to get us to our comfy and cosy lodgings, only several hours after we had originally expected to be there.

Hotel was shit.

The last week or so in Hoi An has been an education into what ‘rainy season’ really means. Most nights are spent drifting off to sleep with the sound of tropical rain hammering on the wooden roofs, and the occasional drip-drip-drip when the odd bit finds its way through.

The Thu Bon river has risen, fallen, risen and fallen again. We have walked the Old Town and had to navigate by what streets are and aren’t underwater. Also in the town a few days ago only the stone bollards separating the footpath and the quick-flowing deep river-water demarcated between relative safety and being swept away. Street sellers hawk umbrellas and plastic ponchos, and the overriding smell of damp persists, inside and out.

But the people do not break.

We heard that, after the typhoon hit a few weeks’ ago, the streets which had been awash with debris as the sun came up were swept clean by the time the sun descended again, with no obvious sign that much was amiss at all. I don’t want to paint an unrealistic picture of the people whistling while they work and going about with big smiles and ‘what can you do?’ expressions in the face of nature’s ferocity, but I suppose that this is just a fact of life in this particular region. Flooding occurs repeatedly over a few months every year; what defences there are are usually traditional, home-made and somewhat effective to not very. The sort of flood defence that would be granted to towns in the UK is not as much in abundance here - I’m thinking of when Cornish town St Ives flooded badly back in the early 2000s, and the town subsequently received a £10 million flood defence scheme that [should] protect it from future such disasters - so aside from long-term government structural measures such as improving drainage systems, residents rely on local practices like building raised structures and restoring natural spaces along riverbanks to improve water infiltration and reduce damage from the flooding. Walking through the Old Town is to walk through shops that are constantly being swept free of water, or stepping over industrial hoses pumping the river water back to its source.

The rains come, the river rises, the water rushes through shops, houses and streets, the people work together to clean and restore.

And the cycle repeats for three to five months.

And more rain is always coming.

Da Nang Airport Corruption + Flooding

Bangkok Limbo + The Wind of the Sea