| This is what my garden looked like yesterday...... no idea whether it will still exist tomorrow |
Walking through here I can SMELL the sweet Frangipani/Plumeria flowers....
I have been tracking movements in the Philippine Sea for days. HOPING that the typhoons will change course.
No such luck...... Kalmaegi is heading straight towards me.....
and now the fucker has almost arrived here.....
It is 13:45 pm...... I moved into my 2nd floor room in the hotel next door about 30 minutes ago...... the village electricity died 5 minutes ago ..... and I still have 5 hours to wait until the real storm gets here...... I might have to walk through a typhoon to re-charge my phone or my laptop...... not pleasant thoughts ......
Needless to say: the wind is howling and the rain comes down in sheets.....
14:30
I'm trying to have a nap and the WiFi hotspot on my phone dies....... PLEASE not today......but rebooting the phone helps ;-)
Kalmaegi is still hurtling towards me....about 150 km away with winds of 215 km/h ...let's call it an adventure or a life-changing experience ;-)
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| it looks like it will make landfall just north of Quy Nhon, 60km north of me .... |
The hotel staff neglected to clean the drain hole on the room's balcony. Result: water 10 cm deep on the balcony. And exposed to the wind coming from the North......Hell. I'm not smoking HERE.
I am a considerate guest. I don't smoke in the room (STUPID ME)...I go out of the room into the hallway and even open a window to smoke.
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| a push-button door lock |
STUPID ME. I left the room door open and a wind gust slams it shut. No worries, it's a push-button lock and I didn't push the button.......But the slamming door made the button LOCK on its own.....
I can NOT get into my room. The door is LOCKED. (Later, the manager makes the excuse that the hotel uses cheap low-quality locks......FUCK YOU.....fucking buy better locks!)
I'm stuck in the hallway in my boxer shorts....my phone and computer are inside the inaccessible room so I can't even call or email anyone for help .....a typhoon is howling outside......
It's not cold, so any NORMAL human being would have just gone to sleep on the hallway floor.....NOT me.....because I DO NOT have any wine or cigarettes (toi la toi ;-)
5 minutes of thinking..... and I stumble downstairs and outside into the Maelstrom (in my underwear ;-).....
Being a smart human being, I had one of the side sliding windows closed but unlatched (i.e. one can slide it open). Only problem: the window sill is 2 meters above the ground....I'm too OLD to jump that high...... Karma helps again.....there is a hotel chair that was blown off one of the hotel balconies in the sand only 10 meters away from me......I grab it (in my underwear), step onto it and actually manage to open the window and fall chest-forward into my house. THANK YOU KARMA !
First things first....Wine and cigarettes!.....then I notice....climbing in through the window was unnecessary.....my wooden sliding balcony door has literally been unhinged by the storm....I could have just walked through there......
For a while, I sit in front of the LEFT floor-to-ceiling window (furthest from the unhinged door) and watch the Maelstrom outside........ Not much to see...it's all GREY and WET.....
And then it happens.....out of nowhere....a 1 meter high ocean wave appears on my terrace.....and knocks the middle window out of its frame....... The 1.5 m x 2.5 m window and the heavy wooden desk inside the room (including a laptop computer etc etc) go FLYING into the room..... this happens ONE METER to my right.....If I had sat behind the middle window I would have been lucky to make it to a hospital...... and I just stare in disbelief and think "HOLY SHIT.....I better move to the room in the back NOW"
Having escaped unharmed from the front room, I sit on the bed in the back room with my feet on the ground, drinking wine and smoking....by now even the back room has 5 cm of ocean water on the floor.....it doesn't matter, the water is warm. There is so much sand in the room already, I don't bother with an ashtray, I just flick the cigarette butts into the water. I keep the back room door open....UNTIL...
there is a LOUD BANH (the left window).....and an ocean wave carries my BOAT 
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As I find out later: The storm changed course..... The eye of a category 5 typhoon went RIGHT OVER my house since hurricanes and typhoons rotate counterclockwise in the Northern hemisphere and they travel eastward.... this means: at first 200 km/h wind from the North, then a bit of calm (the eye of the storm), and then 200km/h wind from the South..... OUCH .....you have to live through it to understand it..... |
The morning after:
I have no more front windows. Nor a door. A 5 cm thick layer of wet sand is covering almost every square inch of the floor inside the house.
To get to my balcony I have to climb over the boat and walk around the toppled work desk and try not to step onto the windows on the floor.
the DEAD duck symbolizes it perfectly....these trees used to have their roots covered by an extra meter of sand
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| the bear's sad look says it all |
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| the remnants of Binh's wall of shame and two dying stuffed toys ;-) |
When I get outside, it is SUNNY and CALM (the irony!). I drag a chair outside and drink wine..... nothing else to do right now....I am lucky to be alive..... My garden (I spent a lot of work on it over the years and was proud of it) is GONE...... Instead of 3 tall trees, I now have 2 trees with fewer branches. Binh's brick wall (with metal rod reinforcements) was blown down by the rear eye wall of the typhoon.
30 minutes later, a visibly worried Quang walks towards me. He is very relieved to see that the foreigner is still alive. I tell him in Vietnamese "It is not easy to kill me".
Yes....this sucks badly..... but make no mistake about it.....I was lucky !..... 2 whole provinces and a third of my neighbours lost the roof over their heads, literally !
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| not my village |
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| not my village |
But, back to my house.....I have no door, no windows, no electricity, no water to flush the toilet for 3 months.... If one uses the toilet, one has to take a bucket and get ocean water to flush the toilet..... At first an adventure....but it gets VERY tiring VERY quickly....
Thanks to an amazing Quang...... as of February my house has been completely repaired....... Thank you Quang....You are a TRUE friend and hopefully earned a lot of Karma Points.....
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| the new door gets installed ;-) |
