By this stage of my journey through Central Vietnam, I had started to understand just how closely people’s lives were connected to the land around them.
In the cities, Vietnam moved at incredible speed.
Motorbikes filled every available space. Shops spilled onto footpaths. Restaurants stayed busy late into the night and entire streets seemed to operate in a permanent state of organised chaos.
But travel a few hours into the countryside and life changed completely.
Here, the seasons mattered.
The river mattered.
The rain mattered.
And for farmers living in one flood-prone valley I visited, the difference between a normal wet season and a severe one could determine almost everything that happened over the following year.
A Beautiful Place With a Difficult Reality
The valley was stunning.
Green mountains rose in the distance, rice fields stretched between villages and narrow roads followed waterways through farmland.
Buffalo stood in muddy paddocks.
Chickens wandered between houses.
Small vegetable gardens surrounded family homes and almost every usable piece of land seemed to be producing something.
If you’d simply driven through taking photographs, you might have thought it was an idyllic rural landscape.
And in many ways it was.
But beautiful places aren’t necessarily easy places to live.
When heavy rain arrived in the mountains, water could move into the lowlands quickly.
Fields disappeared.
Roads became difficult to use.
Animals had to be moved.
Equipment and food stores needed to be lifted above expected water levels.
Families who had experienced floods before knew the routine.
They watched the weather and watched the river.
Farming Doesn’t Stop Because Conditions Are Difficult
What impressed me was how practical everyone was about it.
There was no sense of people sitting around complaining about how unfair their situation was.
They had farms to run.
Animals needed feeding.
Crops needed planting.
Fences needed repairing.
Water channels needed clearing.
So everyone simply got on with it.
I spent time helping with some of the ordinary jobs that become especially important when you’re preparing for periods of heavy rain.
We cleared drainage channels.
Moved materials.
Helped strengthen sections around sheds and animal areas.
Shifted feed and supplies into better protected positions.
There was plenty of digging, lifting and carrying.
Exactly the sort of work I enjoy.
By the end of most days I was filthy.
Which usually means you’ve actually been useful.
The River Gives and the River Takes
One thing I learned very quickly was that flooding wasn’t simply viewed as an enemy.
Water is what makes these valleys productive in the first place.
Rivers feed irrigation systems.
Seasonal rain fills paddies.
Sediment carried by water can replenish farmland.
Without water, agriculture doesn’t work.
The problem comes when there is too much of it, it arrives at the wrong time or it moves with enough force to destroy what people have spent months growing.
That’s farming everywhere in some form.
Too little rain and you’ve got a problem.
Too much rain and you’ve got another one.
The farmer somehow has to survive between the two.
One Crop Can Represent Months of Work
Walking through the fields changed the way I thought about food.
When you buy rice from a supermarket, it’s just another product sitting on a shelf.
You don’t think about the person who planted it.
You don’t think about the hours spent standing in mud.
You don’t think about maintaining irrigation, controlling weeds, dealing with pests or watching the weather.
And you definitely don’t think about the possibility that weeks of rain could arrive and destroy months of work.
For a small farmer, losing a crop isn’t simply disappointing.
That crop may represent food for the family and income for the year.
Lose animals as well and the damage compounds.
A pig, cow or buffalo isn’t just an animal on a farm.
It can represent savings, breeding stock, labour and future income.
You begin to understand why farmers prepare so carefully when bad weather is coming.
Moving Animals Before the Water Arrives
One of the jobs I found most interesting involved preparing areas used for livestock.
Animals are particularly vulnerable when water rises quickly.
So farmers had plans for moving them toward safer or higher ground.
Feed also needed protecting.
There’s not much point saving an animal if all of its food has been sitting underwater.
We helped move supplies and clear areas that could be used if conditions deteriorated.
Once again, the local farmers knew exactly what they were doing.
I was there for muscle.
Point at something heavy and I’ll move it.
It was a fairly effective international communication system.
My Vietnamese Was Still Terrible
By now I’d picked up a few Vietnamese words.
Unfortunately, I had also developed the confidence to use them.
Confidence and ability are not the same thing.
I’d say something that I thought was perfectly understandable.
There would be silence.
Then someone would look at someone else.
Then everyone would laugh.
I’d apparently just said complete nonsense.
The farmers would correct me and make me repeat it.
I’d repeat it.
More laughter.
Eventually someone would point at a shovel and we’d return to the language we both understood.
Work.
Farmers Everywhere Have Something in Common
I’ve met farmers in different parts of the world and there seems to be something universal about them.
They watch the weather constantly.
They know every section of their land.
They can tell you exactly where water will run before the rain even starts.
They notice changes that a visitor would never see.
A cloud formation.
A river level.
The condition of soil.
A change in the wind.
To me, it was countryside.
To them, it was information.
Food Tastes Better After You’ve Worked for It
Lunch became one of my favourite parts of the day.
Not only because I was starving.
Although I definitely was.
Meals were usually shared.
Rice, vegetables, fresh herbs, fish, meat, soup and whatever else the family had prepared.
A lot of it came directly from the surrounding farms.
There is something very different about eating food beside the people who actually grew it.
You become far less interested in whether everything looks perfect.
It tastes good.
It fills you up.
Someone grew it.
Someone cooked it.
And they’re sharing it with you.
That’s enough.
The Generosity Kept Surprising Me
This happened repeatedly throughout Vietnam.
People who had less than many Australians would consider comfortable were incredibly generous with what they had.
You’d help someone for a few hours and suddenly there was food everywhere.
They’d offer drinks.
They’d insist you eat more.
Then they’d insist again.
Vietnamese hospitality can make saying “I’m full” completely irrelevant.
Apparently your opinion on whether you’ve eaten enough isn’t always taken into consideration.
Another bowl of rice would appear.
When the Weather Turns
During my time there, I started paying far more attention to rain.
Not because I was worried about getting wet.
Getting wet was the least important problem.
You started thinking about what prolonged rain meant downstream.
How high was the river?
Were the drains flowing?
Could vehicles still use the road?
Were animals in safe areas?
Were supplies protected?
I could leave eventually.
The families couldn’t.
That was their home.
Their livelihood was sitting in those fields.
Floodwater Doesn’t Just Disappear
Another thing outsiders don’t always appreciate is that the problem doesn’t end when the water goes down.
Then the cleanup starts.
Mud has to be removed.
Damaged fencing needs repairing.
Debris needs clearing.
Fields have to be assessed.
Animals may become sick.
Stored food and feed may have been ruined.
Roads and irrigation channels may need work.
If crops have been destroyed, farmers then have to decide whether there is enough time and money to plant again.
A flood might last days.
Its financial consequences can last much longer.
Helping Doesn’t Always Mean Arriving After a Disaster
Something else I learned was that disaster support isn’t only about turning up after something terrible has happened.
Preparation matters.
Clearing a blocked drain before heavy rain is better than clearing floodwater from a house afterwards.
Moving supplies before the river rises is better than replacing them later.
Strengthening something today might stop it being destroyed tomorrow.
It’s not dramatic.
Nobody takes photographs of the disaster that didn’t happen.
But prevention and preparation can sometimes be the most useful work of all.
The Resilience of Rural Communities
The word “resilience” gets thrown around a lot.
Businesses use it.
Motivational speakers use it.
People put it on posters.
But in that valley, resilience was practical.
It meant rebuilding a fence after the water took it.
Planting another crop.
Helping your neighbour move animals.
Cleaning mud out of a house.
Sharing equipment.
Starting again because there wasn’t another option.
Nobody needed to call it resilience.
It was simply what people did.
I Started Looking at Rain Differently
Growing up in Australia, I’d seen storms, floods and cyclones.
I understood that weather could be destructive.
But spending time with small farmers gave me a different perspective.
When most of your income comes from land, weather isn’t just something happening outside your window.
It’s part of your financial life.
Your food supply.
Your work.
Your plans.
Your future.
You can’t negotiate with it.
You can only prepare as well as possible and respond to whatever arrives.
Another Side of Vietnam I Would Never Have Seen From a Hotel
If I’d travelled through Vietnam in the normal way, I probably would have missed all of this.
I would have seen the rice fields.
I would have photographed the mountains.
I might have stopped beside the road and thought how peaceful the valley looked.
Then I would have kept driving.
Instead, I met the people working those fields.
I carried their supplies.
I ate at their tables.
I listened while they explained where the water went when the river rose.
I saw the work involved in preparing for something they knew could happen again.
And suddenly the landscape meant more.
What the Farmers Taught Me
I arrived thinking I was there to help farmers.
Like so many experiences on this journey, the exchange ended up going both ways.
They reminded me how little control we actually have over some things.
They showed me the value of preparation.
They showed me resourcefulness.
And they showed me how communities survive difficult circumstances by helping one another rather than waiting for someone else to solve everything.
At the end of one afternoon, I stood looking across fields toward the mountains.
The air was heavy.
Dark clouds were building in the distance.
Somewhere behind me, people were still moving equipment and finishing jobs before the rain arrived.
The valley looked peaceful.
But now I understood it differently.
It wasn’t simply beautiful countryside.
It was somebody’s workplace.
Somebody’s food supply.
Somebody’s family history.
Somebody’s future.
And every season, the people living there worked with the land, the river and the weather knowing that none of them could ever be completely controlled.
That takes a particular kind of strength.
Vietnam kept showing me that strength everywhere I went.
– Adam Troy Adams
