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Nguyen Ngoc Tin, 31, says on the night of Nov. 19 his mother called, her voice breaking amid the pounding rain: "The water has swallowed our one-story house. Your grandmother and I are sitting on the roof, hungry and thirsty, and no one has come to help."
A few hours later he lost contact with her. "I knew there were landslides everywhere, but, life or death, I had to get home," he says.
At noon on Nov. 20 he loaded food and drinking water in his car and headed for National Highway 1 to start the 500 km trip home.
The closer he got to the central region, the more rain there was. Many places were inundated, with water very deep and entire concrete medians swept away.
By 11 p.m. he was stuck at the Ca Pass tunnel in Van Ninh District, Khanh Hoa Province, 60 km from home. Hundreds of trucks and buses had backed up, drivers slumped over their wheels after spending hours in a traffic jam that would not move.
Tin decided to abandon the car by the roadside and asked a friend to send a motorbike from Ho Chi Minh City.
During the 20 hours he waited, he survived on water, saving the food for his mother and grandmother.
Nguyen Ngoc Tin, 31, traveled by motorbike from Ho Chi Minh City to his hometown in Phu Yen Ward, Dak Lak Province, on Nov. 22, 2025. Video courtesy of Tin
On the night of Nov. 21, once the motorbike arrived, Tin plunged into the darkness, searching for a way up Ca Pass, where cars were banned because of severe flooding and landslides. He weaved between boulders and slabs of concrete strewn across the road. The sight of motorcyclists snaking along in single file, working together to clear debris and open a path, in the middle of the stormy night is etched in his memory.
At 2 a.m. on November 22, after more than 48 hours without sleep, Tin finally reached home. The modest house had been wrecked and was in complete darkness due to a power cut.
Seeing that his mother and grandmother had been taken to safety by neighbors, he burst into tears.
On the night of November 20 bricklayer Dang Ngoc Ninh, 36, who works in Dong Nai Province, was also battling his way home to Dong Hoa Ward, Dak Lak Province. Hearing that the hydropower plant had released floodwaters and that only a few packs of instant noodles were left at home while water was lapping at the door, he decided to ride his old motorbike back.
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Dang Ngoc Ninh’s motorbike, caked in mud during his trip home on Nov. 21, 2025. Photo courtesy of Ninh |
Ninh’s journey was stormy from start to finish.
He suffered a tire blowout in Ninh Thuan Province, forcing him to walk the motorcycle for kilometers.
With the old vehicle lacking a headlight, he had to use the lights from other vehicles to see. Meanwhile, the endless beeping of a failed connection that met his efforts to call home set his nerves jangling.
Streams of motorbikes bearing license plates starting with 78, for Phu Yen, the coastal area of Dak Lak province, were racing through the rain, seemingly headed for their hometowns.
When he reached Ca Pass, only a narrow, jagged strip of road remained. Gale-force winds lashed him. "Soaked and shivering, I had to change my raincoat four times," he says.
In Phu Lam, a coastal area of Dak Lak, the floodwaters were so high that his motorbike stalled. Exhausted, he was lucky that truck drivers stranded there helped push his vehicle along.
In the early hours of Nov. 21 Ninh reached the front yard of his house just as the water had begun to recede. Seeing him caked in mud from head to toe, his eldest daughter dashed out and threw her arms around him.
Ninh’s family had gone a whole day without food, huddling together in a small attic. After cleaning the house, he got back on his motorbike to tour the commune, updating relatives and neighbors who were still far from home and unable to return. "Being away from home myself, I know just how desperately they crave news," he says.
People trekke made their way home through floodwaters to deliver provisions and reach their relatives in need on the morning of Nov. 22, 2025. Video by Phong Bui
But not everyone was as fortunate as Tin and Ninh. On the morning of Nov. 21 Huynh Nhu, 30, jumped off a bus stuck on Ca Pass and walked more than 20 km back to her home in Dong Hoa Ward.
Her elderly parents and older brother had been battling the floodwaters for days without food. On the landslide-stricken mountain road, hundreds of people from Phu Yen also left their buses behind and walked home like she did.
Nhu collapsed many times from exhaustion but kept clutching the bundle of food inside her jacket. After four hours on foot, she reached home, but it was already too late. "My brother died in the flood," Nhu said, her voice hoarse.
Her family had held his funeral on the morning of Nov. 22.
According to the Department of Dyke Management and Natural Disaster Prevention and Control, the recent floods in the south-central region have left 72 people dead, with Dak Lak accounting for 44 of them.
On Nov. 22 the water began to recede, but hundreds of thousands of households are still living without electricity or clean water and urgently need support to recover.
