By Nguyen Van Tien Hung

Suitcase Evacuation

There have been a lot of stories told about the floods in Hue last year. Perhaps one heard less often is the story of the veteran tour guide "Backpack" Sinh who successfully evacuated two elderly female Swedes over a gruelling 108 kilometres and three collapsing mountain passes to the safety of Danang.The waters rise. On October 20, Le Van Sinh set off on a trekking tour with Anna Marie, 59 years old, and Rosa Marie, 60 years old.

Grinning broadly Rosa confides, "A couple of friends went along with Sinh through the previous year's floods in Quang Tri, they assured us that a trip with Sinh would be very interesting... of course we had no idea that we'd get flooded too!" In 1998, Sinh demonstrated his resourcefulness in the face of disaster when a group of his tourists was stuck for several days and nights in a remote area of Quang Tri during seasonal flooding. He converted an old warehouse into a motel, made sure clean food was always available, sat watch for several nights without sleep, and eventually managed to organise safe passage out of the area.

Upon meeting Sinh on the first day of their 7-stop Mekong-Hanoi tour, Anna Marie was full of the story her friends had told her about the previous floods. Sinh, on the other hand, was keeping pretty quiet. At the thickest end of the wet season, and with Central Vietnam featuring prominently on their itinerary, he didn't want to tempt the Vietnam's notoriously cheesed-off water-god any more than absolutely necessary. He uttered to himself the words aˆn ma‚m aˆn muo i no—i xui which is a Vietnamese warning against tempting fate (literally "eating fish-sauce and salt and speak unlucky"), and then assured them, "Don't stress, you're absolutely safe, my ladies."

Sure enough though, on the afternoon of November 1, as the three pulled into Hue, it was raining hard and steady, and not looking like letting up anytime soon. As he shuttled his tourists to the Phuong Hoang Hotel, Sinh eyed the Huong River warily. More than a few years of experience were telling him that this was no ordinary downpour. That night he couldn't sleep. At 12 midnight water spilled into Le Loi Street and by 2 a.m., the water was knee deep in the hotel gardens. Sinh went downstairs and woke up the van driver, who muttered, "It's no use, once the waters comin' in here like that you can rest assured all the paddies in the area are well and truly flooded - Thanh Lam, Thua Luu and everywhere. Sorry to say, we're stuck here, old brother." Wanting to make sure for himself, at the crack of dawn Sinh waded for 2 kilometres to the Hue railway station, only to find it was shut down. No trains were coming or going. Sinh was just in time to get a couple of phone calls out to Hanoi and Saigon before phone lines were cut at nine o'clock. Hue was isolated.
Meanwhile, the Phuong Hoang Hotel was in a commotion. There were over 30 hungry guests, including newcomers who had come from low areas to seek shelter from the flood, but only a meagre 2 kilograms of rice. There was real danger of hunger. Arriving at the disorderly scene which was ensuing, Sinh was quick to reassure his two Swedish charges, and then immediately set about getting together a group of volunteers to make a search of the local area for food supplies. After 30 minutes of searching, the volunteers returned to report that they had discovered nothing but the discouraging sight of tightly closed shop, house and restaurant fronts, which apparently were not opening for hungry visitors. One old man, who had just taken up shelter at the hotel, said his house not 20 metres away had a couple of old chickens and a drum of rice still sitting in the kitchen. Everyone immediately agreed it would be a good idea to get the food-they also agreed that Sinh was the man for the job.

Off he went through the increasingly cold and turbulent waters. On the first go he grabbed the two chickens, on the second, the rice. On the third and final go, water had submerged the entire kitchen, with gas cylinders and other utensils bobbing to and fro as Sinh nabbed the last of the herbs and spices off the old man's top shelf. When he got back to the hotel, Sinh was white with the cold-but assured enough food for the following day.

The following morning of November 3, the lane into the hotel was neck-deep in water. Sinh hailed a boat down to the Trang Tien Bridge, then waded across it to the other side where he purchased 100 packets of prawn noodles, assuring the food supply for another day. By the following afternoon, the waters had subsided enough for Sinh to pick up his bike and splash out to the fields of Thanh Lam to check out the situation. He decided to get out of Hue the following morning.

The road to escape.

Rosa marie and Anna marie, two foreign tourists helped out of harm's way by Smith

At 6 in the morning on November 6, Sinh took his two Swedish ladies out to the Phu Bai Airport by van to catch a flight out of Hue. Sinh was beginning to get concerned since his two tourists had a plane ticket out of Vietnam marked November 8 which was not eligible for extension or refund.

His consternation was considerable increased when he was politely informed that due to abnormal wind conditions, flights would not be leaving or arriving at Phu Bai for several days.

There was only one way out-via road to Danang, which would involve crossing three notoriously unstable passes: Phuoc Tuong, Phu Gia and of course, the giant, Hai Van. Back to town and Sinh scouted about for news of the road conditions to Danang. Locals reported that all three passes had collapsed and traffic was at a standstill. Sinh turned to the two sectarian Swedes and said "Should we try?" He received two firm nods in reply. Sinh decided he would try to get them out through a series of shortcuts over the passes.

The traffic started to jam up only 20 kilometres out of Hue at a buckled bridge. The three dumped the car, crossed the river in a boat and then jumped onto a 15-seater charter van for another 15 kilometres to the first pass-Phuoc Tuong. Traffic was clogged right down to the foothills. Determined not to be stopped, Sinh hauled Rosa's 25 kilogram suitcase (which was crammed with stone crafts) onto his wiry shoulders, paid a bearer to take up Anna's 15 kilogram counterpart, and then began the struggle over the shoulder of Phuoc Tuong. Experience from over 10 years of guiding helped Sinh to judge the terrain in order to navigate a safe passage. He found walking "companions" in the form of two sturdy sticks for the ladies. The pass was absolutely devoid of humans except for a gang of emergency road workers who cheered on the bedraggled gaggle of adventurers with hearty cheers and hand clapping. Anna, who was beginning to get a taste for the adventure clapped back with equal vigor.

After cutting across the disastrous Phu Gia Pass on motorbikes and on foot, the three came through lashing wind and rain to Lang Co at about noon. Here they rested for lunch, and Sinh turned his eyes to the looming silhouette of the Hai Van Pass. He saw that massive sections of the mountain which had broken off, and contrasted against this scene, as if to highlight humankind's absurdity, the tiny image of a lone bulldozer working insanely on in the appalling conditions. Shaking off the creeping cold, Sinh leapt to his feet: "Hit the road!" he yelled, and they were off again.

With Sinh sniffing out the quickest, safest trail, the three drove, biked, carted, walked and groped their way over the pass. Sinh painstakingly tested every square centimetre of earth his two elderly charges were likely to cross to make sure no accident occured. Sinh was no stranger to these conditions himself, and had had plenty of experience guiding Western tourists through equally hazardous terrain - but Anna and Rosa were old women. Nonetheless, despite their age, the two ladies' viking ancestry was clearly coming in handy - indeed their eyes were almost gleaming as they defied of the mighty Hai Van! They struggled on courageously, suffering no more than the occasional slip, and three hours later, as drowned as rats, they traipsed into Danang.

While the two exhausted tourists searched for a place to shower, Sinh rushed out to the Da Nang airport to book them the soonest flight possible. Luckily, he was easily able to get a seat on a five o'clock flight, since most of the volume of tourists were still trapped in Hue. Sinh, in fact, was the first person to get tourists out of Hue to Danang.
Only when the plane flew out of Danang on path to Hanoi did Sinh breath easily for the first time in days. He also had chance to pause and notice that his own person was in fact caked in mud and filth from head to toe. Sinh still keeps the shirt he wore during his epic evacuation, which was faded by the flood-waters and the trials of the journey.
Source: The Gioi Moi (New World Times)