We unknowingly avoided historic flooding in Vietnam, as the second time we attempted to visit that country was aborted due to unrelated factors that were beyond our control.
We Unknowingly Avoided Deadly Historic Flooding in Vietnam.
We were originally scheduled to visit Vietnam and other countries in Southeast Asia during the last half of January of 2025; but we then found out that the celebration of the lunar new year was not a good time to travel there — so we then rescheduled the trip to late October of 2025.
The rainy season in Vietnam is between May and November — and we understood that the precipitation can be unrelenting at times during that period of time…
…but the rains in October of 2025 were significantly worse than we thought.
One of the displays inside Nhà cổ Tân Ký — which is the Tan Ky Old Heritage House in Hoi An — illustrated markings of historic floods over the years. For reference purposes, the marking of 8 Nov 2011 is approximately five feet and three inches from the floor…
…and the marker for 30 Oct 2025 was simply astonishing to us, as it was the second deepest flood that was recorded in 285 years in that structure, which was built in 1741 and is the oldest house in Hoi An. Only the flood of Wednesday, October 7, 1964 — whose marker is fastened to the wall near the ceiling — was deeper.
At least 85 people have been reported dead or missing from the flooding in October of 2025, which resulted in approximately $1.73 billion in damage. Typhoon Ragasa was purportedly the source for the majority of the rainfall.
We would have had to cancel a substantial portion of our trip had we traveled to Vietnam in late October of 2025.
Final Boarding Call
We finally traveled to Taiwan, Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam starting at the end of February of 2026; and we returned to the United States several weeks later. While the sun and warm weather welcomed us for the most part, we still experienced significant precipitation on several of the days we traveled despite visiting outside of the rainy season — but thankfully, our plans experienced minimal interruption.
When plans go awry, sometimes they prevent something worse from happening.
Life is funny that way…
All photographs ©2026 by Brian Cohen.
