Hoi An Flooded Three Times in Twenty Days: What the 2025 Season Actually Looked Like

Every guide to central Vietnam tells you that October and November are the flood months. None of them tell you the thing that actually matters for planning, which is that a flood in Hoi An is not one event. In 2025 the town flooded three times in twenty days.

That changes the decision completely. If flooding were a single event, you could shift your dates by a week and miss it. It is not, and you cannot. Below is the 2025 season reconstructed from dated Vietnamese reporting, because reading the reports in sequence shows something that none of them says on its own.

The 2025 season, day by day

Date	What was recorded
26 Oct 2025	Flooding begins across the coastal provinces
27 Oct 2025	Bach Dang, Tran Phu and Nguyen Thai Hoc streets submerged; some areas reported at nearly 3 metres. Tourists wade out waist-deep. Hotels and homestays move guests by boat to higher ground. Authorities expect the third-level flood alert to be passed within 12 to 24 hours.
28 Oct 2025	Water exceeds 1.5 metres inside some shops
By 31 Oct 2025	The Thu Bon River reaches 5.62 metres, beating the 1964 record by 4 centimetres. Described as the worst flooding in 60 years. Up to 1.7 metres of rain in 24 hours across the coastal provinces. More than 5,000 hectares of crops destroyed and over 16,000 cattle dead.
17 Nov 2025	Third flood within 20 days. Nguyen Thi Minh Khai over 50 cm, Bach Dang over 1 metre, water at the base of the Japanese Covered Bridge. Shopkeepers move stock above 2 metres.
18 Nov 2025	Nguyen Thai Hoc Street under water by 6.30 p.m., more than a metre in places. Boats working the alleys at 50,000 to 200,000 VND per person. Police posted at flood-prone spots, life vests issued.

The first thing the sequence shows: a 4-centimetre record

The Thu Bon River crest of 5.62 metres did not merely look bad. It passed the 1964 mark by four centimetres, sixty-one years later. That is the single most useful number in the whole 2025 season, because it tells you what the upper bound currently is. When somebody says Hoi An floods, this is the worst version of it that has ever been measured.

It is worth holding that next to the 1.7 metres of rain in 24 hours. Almost nowhere receives that in a day. This was not an ordinary wet-season week with an unlucky afternoon.

The second thing: depth is a street fact, not a town fact

On 17 November, two streets in the same small Old Quarter were reported at very different depths on the same day.

Street	Depth on 17 Nov 2025	Position
Bach Dang	Over 1 metre	Directly on the Hoai riverfront
Nguyen Thi Minh Khai	Over 50 cm	Set back from the river

Half a metre of difference between two streets you could walk between in five minutes. Over a metre means you are not leaving on foot and your ground floor is gone. Fifty centimetres means wellingtons and an inconvenience.

This makes hotel street a bigger decision than travel dates. Shifting your trip by a week does not reliably move you out of the flood, as the three-floods-in-twenty-days sequence shows. Booking two streets back from the Hoai River does change what a flood means for you. Almost every guide gets this backwards, advising you on months and saying nothing about which side of the river your room is on.

The riverfront rooms are, of course, the ones with the view, and in October and November they are the ones being evacuated by boat.

The third thing, and the strangest: the flood turned into a ticket

This is only visible if you read the reports three weeks apart.

27 October. A hotel staff member describes the decision to move guests: fearing the flood would rise further and the electricity might be cut, they moved people to higher ground quickly. A British tourist, Brian, said he was really surprised at how quickly the floodwaters came up, and that the hotel staff had put them on a boat that afternoon to move to another hotel. A boat operator, Mr Thanh, said he was paid about 200,000 VND, roughly 8 dollars 20, per trip, and had already done six trips that day.

18 November. Foreign tourists eagerly renting boats to go and see the flooded town. Fares of 50,000 to 200,000 VND, about 2 to 8 dollars, depending on route and duration. Life vests provided, police stationed at the flood-prone sites. Cafes near the floodline staying open. A tourist from Nghe An, Nguyen Phuong Lan, 32, said she had seen pictures of flooded Hoi An online and been curious, and that boating through the streets in person was surreal.

Same town. Same water. Same price per boat trip. In three weeks it went from an evacuation to an excursion.

That is not a cute observation, it is a warning about how the place will look to you when you arrive. You will see tourists photographing the flood from a boat and conclude it is fine. It may well be fine, on that day, on that street. It was not fine on 27 October, two streets away, when the same boats were moving people out of hotels that were about to lose power.

The visible behaviour of other tourists is the single least reliable indicator here, because the sightseeing boats and the evacuation boats are the same boats at the same fare.

What the numbers do not tell you

Three honest limits, since this post is assembled from reporting rather than measured directly.

The depths quoted are reported figures for named streets on named days, not survey data, and "nearly 3 metres" on 27 October refers to some areas rather than the Old Quarter as a whole. The three-floods-in-twenty-days count is as the Vietnamese reports framed it, counting from late October; whether you call the 26 to 28 October episode one flood or two changes the count, not the conclusion. And 2025 was a record year, so it is the ceiling rather than the average. A typical October will be wetter than the guides imply and far less dramatic than this.

What to actually do with this

Decision	Do this	Why
Travel dates	Do not try to dodge the flood by shifting a week	Three floods in twenty days in 2025
Hotel choice	Two streets back from the Hoai River, upper floor	Over 1 m on Bach Dang versus over 50 cm on Nguyen Thi Minh Khai, same day
What to watch	The Thu Bon River level and the flood alert level, not the sky	Alert level three was the trigger for evacuations
Reading other tourists	Ignore them	Sightseeing boats and evacuation boats are the same boats at the same fare
Cash	Carry it	Hotels moved guests partly for fear of losing power
Boat fares	Expect 50,000 to 200,000 VND per person	Published range during the November floods
Beach plans	Do not build the trip around them	October is the wettest month on this coast
What the upside is	Off-season rates run well below peak	Widely reported discounting in the wet months

The honest summary

Hoi An in October and November is not a gamble on whether it rains. It is close to a certainty that you will see high water at some point, a real possibility that it happens more than once, and a small chance you are there for something like 2025, when a 61-year-old river record went by four centimetres.

None of that makes the trip a mistake. The town is genuinely remarkable and the wet months are quieter and cheaper. But the decision that changes your experience is not which week you fly. It is how far your hotel sits from the Hoai River, and which floor your room is on.

Sources

• VietnamNet, Hoi An floods disrupt tourism as streets submerge, 27 October 2025
• VietnamNet, Hoi An floods again as residents rush to move belongings, tourists wade in, 17 November 2025
• VietnamNet, Third flood in 20 days turns Hoi An into a floating attraction, 18 November 2025
• Gulf News, Vietnam's ancient town turns into a river after record floods, 31 October 2025