I’ve been running visa runs and shuttle transfers out of Da Nang since 2023, which means every September through December I get the same message from travelers: “my bus ticket is for next week, is the road even going to be open.” Here’s the direct answer. Central Vietnam’s typhoon and rainy season runs roughly September to December, and yes, a bad storm can shut down the exact route between Da Nang, Hoi An and Hue that most bus tickets cover.
Does typhoon season actually shut down bus travel between Da Nang, Hoi An and Hue?
Yes, but only during active storm windows, not for the whole season. Central Vietnam sits in the most exposed part of the coast, and when a typhoon or major flood event hits, roads, the Hai Van Pass and even airports can close for anywhere from a few hours to a couple of days. Most days in September through December are completely normal for travel.
When is Vietnam’s typhoon season, and which months are the riskiest?
The season runs roughly September through December along the central coast, with peak intensity from mid-September to mid-November. October and November are consistently flagged as the most dangerous months for typhoon and flood risk around Da Nang, Hoi An and Hue, which is also exactly when most bus disruptions and route closures get reported.
Storms in this region most frequently make landfall on the stretch of coast between Quang Binh and Quang Ngai provinces, which puts Hue, Da Nang and Hoi An squarely inside the strike zone. A typhoon making landfall near Ho Chi Minh City, by contrast, is comparatively rare, which is why southern routes rarely see the same kind of weather cancellations.
How many typhoons actually hit Vietnam in a given year is oddly hard to pin down. Vietnam’s National Center for Hydro-Meteorological Forecasting is cited in some sources as saying 5 to 6 typhoons make landfall on or directly affect the country each year, while another source puts the number at around a dozen. I have not been able to confirm either figure against a primary NCHMF page, so treat both as rough ranges rather than a settled count, and don’t plan your trip around one specific number.
Does the Hai Van Pass close during typhoons?
Usually, yes. The Hai Van Pass, the coastal mountain road connecting Da Nang and Hue, is routinely closed to traffic for safety once typhoon conditions become active, since high wind and landslide risk make the switchbacks genuinely dangerous. I have not found one official transport authority notice you can bookmark and check, so treat “the pass closes in bad storms” as the working assumption rather than something with a public live-status page.
What actually happened to travelers during the 2025 storms?
2025 gives a useful preview of what a bad season looks like, and it was not one continuous event but at least two separate flood pulses layered on top of typhoon landfalls. In early November 2025, heavy rain worsened by hydroelectric dam discharges on the Thu Bon River, with up to 1.7 meters of rain in 24 hours, killed 35 people and forced the closure of Hoi An’s UNESCO-listed Ancient Town, which reopened to tourists around November 1 to 2, 2025.
Weeks later, a separate mid-to-late November flood event killed at least 41 people, left 9 missing, and flooded more than 52,000 homes across Quang Binh, Quang Tri, Thua Thien Hue, Da Nang and Quang Nam. During that same stretch, National Highway 1A suffered multiple landslide and flooding points that cut traffic across those same provinces, and some rail routes were briefly blocked before roads reopened. Da Nang declared a state of emergency as the flooding and landslides spread.
Typhoon Bualoi hit in late September 2025 and forced Da Nang International Airport to suspend arrivals from roughly 6am to 11am on September 28, part of a coordinated closure of four coastal airports ahead of landfall; the full closure ran nearly 48 hours and canceled more than 180 flights, with trains suspended too. Ahead of the storm, Da Nang planned to relocate more than 210,000 people and Hue more than 32,000 coastal residents. Typhoon Kalmaegi followed in early November 2025, canceling hundreds of flights and disrupting eight airports including Da Nang; the U.S. Embassy issued an official weather alert on Kalmaegi’s storm conditions on November 5, 2025. By around November 26, Da Nang, Hoi An and Hue were reported fully open again, airports normal and floodwaters down almost everywhere touristy.
How do bus refunds work if my trip is cancelled for weather?
It depends entirely on who cancels the trip, not on the storm itself. The general pattern across Vietnamese long-distance bus operators is that when the company itself cancels a route for severe weather, you get rebooked onto the next available departure or offered a refund or credit - not a guaranteed instant cash refund. If you cancel yourself out of fear of a storm before the company has officially called it off, that’s usually treated as an ordinary passenger cancellation under normal fare rules, which are often non-refundable.
I could not find a single operator’s own published, storm-specific refund clause. Booking-aggregator listings describe Phuong Trang, also known as FUTA Bus Lines, as offering rebooking or a refund when the company itself delays or cancels a scheduled departure, though I found no written storm clause on Phuong Trang’s own site. Hanh Cafe tickets are generally described as non-cancellable, with refund or change terms varying by fare class and how close to departure you ask. The Sinh Tourist is associated on third-party booking platforms with a “150% refund guarantee,” but that figure applies specifically to cases where the purchased transport service was never actually provided, it comes from a booking platform rather than the operator’s own page, and ordinary passenger-initiated cancellations generally aren’t covered. Message the operator directly through their official channel once a storm is forecast, and get the cancellation status in writing before you assume anything.
What to Do If Your Bus Route Is Cancelled or Delayed
- Check your operator’s official Zalo, Facebook page or hotline the morning of departure, not the night before - storm tracks shift fast and a route that’s fine at 8pm can be closed by 6am.
- If the company confirms the route is cancelled or the Hai Van Pass is shut, ask specifically for rebooking to the next available departure rather than assuming a cash refund is automatic.
- If you’re mid-trip and stuck in Hoi An or Hue when a closure hits, book an extra night at your current guesthouse before scrambling for alternate transport - roads have historically reopened within a day or two once the worst of the storm passes.
- Screenshot the cancellation notice or the agent’s written confirmation before you leave the counter or close the chat, since refund and credit requests are far easier to process with that record in hand.
- If your bus route runs through the Hai Van Pass specifically, ask whether the operator has an inland alternate route around Da Nang, since some carriers reroute buses rather than cancel outright.
Bottom Line: What to Remember About Typhoon Season
Put together, the season is a string of separate storms with normal weeks between them, not one continuous event, and your refund odds depend on who cancels the trip, not on how bad the storm looks on the news. 2025 had at least two distinct major flood pulses in October and November, and travelers who checked conditions once in September assumed the whole season would look the same and got caught off guard in November.
The second common mistake is confusing a passenger’s own decision to cancel out of anxiety with an operator-confirmed weather cancellation; only a company-confirmed cancellation reliably triggers rebooking or a refund. When I’m booking visa runs or airport transfers through this window, I build in a buffer day around the Hai Van Pass specifically, since that choke point is the single most likely spot to strand a tight itinerary; it’s one of the small things BestBus Vietnam does by default for clients traveling October through November.
If a storm is bearing down on your travel dates and you want a second opinion on whether your specific route and day are likely to be affected, message me on Telegram with your dates and I’ll check what’s actually happening on the ground before you commit to a ticket or a cancellation.
