From dawn on October 8, many areas in the center of Thai Nguyen were heavily flooded. This rapid rise in flood has disrupted the lives of local people, even leading to the risk of riverbank, river dike and landslides on steep slopes in the above area.
Although Thai Hai tourist village was also affected by the circulation of storm No. 10, the villagers all joined hands to help compatriots directly affected in the flooded areas in their hometowns.
Three days ago, from 4am, the people in the Tay village woke up to prepare ingredients and cook delicious dishes to transport to the gathering points of the Provincial People's Committee.
Nearly 200 villagers focused on cooking, men slaughtered pigs, slashed bones, carried calves while women blew rice, sticky rice, and wrapped them in chopsticks. Each person has a job, everyone is busy but happy because they have contributed a small part to help compatriots in difficulty.
Ms. Le Thi Nga, Deputy Village Village Commissioner of Thai Hai, said: Each meal includes rice handles or hot sticky rice, roast pork, sesame salt and filtered water. The villagers use materials for self-growing and raising livestock, stored indoors to bring to the common kitchen with cooking and packaging. We send people in flooded areas the most neat dishes, which are difficult to damage and are blocked by the weather.
On the afternoon of October 8, the villagers prepared 300 meals. By October 9, that number increased to 1,800 meals.
Today, October 10, the number of meals is expected to be 1,500. In addition to preparing hot meals, Thai Hai villagers also supported 4,000 - 5,000 bottles of pure water produced right in the village.
These days, the villagers are putting aside their own work and especially tourism activities to focus on cooking to support people in flooded areas.
According to Ms. Nga, during the days of heavy rain affected by the circulation of storm No. 10, Thai Hai village also suffered a lot of property damage.
She said: "We had a power outage for 2 days. Regarding water sources, we use water from offshore wells, so we still have enough domestic water. In addition, about 2 hectares of land for growing fruit trees, vegetables, and medicinal herbs were deeply flooded and damaged."
Some areas were eroded, but the stilt houses and residential areas of the villagers were not affected. When it rains heavily, water from streams and lakes rises, obstructing traffic and tourism activities, but it recedes quickly.
"We are still luckier than many other people, have a house to stay in, and have enough food to stock up on. Currently, there are also some tourists who have returned to the village to visit. People divided their tasks into groups to ensure normal life returned. We also hope that the lives of people in other areas will soon stabilize, Ms. Nga added.
Built in 2003, Thai Hai tourist village (Thai Nguyen) currently preserves 30 traditional stilt houses of the Tay ethnic group with an age of nearly a hundred years. With the motto of "eating a pot together, sharing money in a bag together", doing community tourism together and contributing income to the common fund of 200 people, Thai Hai is affectionately called by many tourists as "the happy village".
In 2022, the village was honored by the United Nations Tourism Organization (UN Tourism) as the World's Best Tourist Village.
