Prolonged blackouts turn daily life upside down for families on Asia’s most beautiful island

Racing against the clock she began cooking tea (sweet soup) and prepping sauces to sell the next morning. Once these were finished she turned to washing laundry and cooking rice for her family. “I live by the power company’s schedule now, not the sun’s,” the 33-year-old says.

For the past five days Nguyen’s family of four in Duong Dong Ward, Phu Quoc Island, have relied on one cooked meal a day.

Their routine has been inverted by the daytime blackouts: They sleep during the day and wake up at midnight when the grid reconnects.

The schedule is exhausting, particularly for her two young children, who struggle to sleep in the tropical heat.

Nguyen is one of thousands of residents on Phu Quoc, voted Asia’s most beautiful island by Condé Nast Traveler readers, grappling with a major power failure. The accidental severing of the 110 kV Ha Tien-Phu Quoc submarine cable on Nov. 29 left 30,000 households without steady power supply.

While authorities have deployed backup generators, supply remains insufficient, forcing the utility to effect rotating blackouts.

In Duong To commune, Hoang Dung, 38, says her day now begins at 2:00 a.m. She and her husband use the fleeting hours of electricity to charge fans, fill water tanks and do laundry. “We don’t know when the power will go again, so we have to use every single minute we have.”

For parents like Thu Thao, 30, the outage has made childcare a physical ordeal. During the initial 32-hour blackout, her refrigerator failed, spoiling the family’s food. Her biggest struggle, however, is with the heat.

She spends her nights fanning her three-month-old son by hand until her arms ache. “Looking at the pile of dirty clothes, the sink full of unwashed dishes because there’s no water pump, and my baby crying from the heat- I am truly at breaking point limit,” she says.

Many people are renting hotel rooms with private generators to catch up on sleep, or hauling laundry to workplaces that still have power.

Residents in Dung’s neighborhood gathered on their porches to catch the evening breeze and chat on Nov. 30, 2025. Photo courtesy of Dung

The crisis has brought local commerce to a near-standstill. Film editor Nguyen Quang Thieu says his work is “frozen” because his computer requires grid power.

He now stops all personal activity by 6:00 p.m. to utilize the last natural light, often driving to other districts or working through the night to meet deadlines.

Hardware stores are making a killing. Nguyen Van Thuan, 35, an electrical supplies shop owner, reports soaring demand for generators and batteries. On Dec. 2 alone he sold nearly 40 generators, the same number as several previous months combined.

According to the Southern Power Corporation, the submarine cable fault is complex. It has mobilized 12 large generators with 2.3 MW capacity to supplement the grid, which is now served by the sole remaining cable.

Officials estimate it will take a month to fully repair the Ha Tien-Phu Quoc cable. For now people like Nguyen are resigning themselves to the new schedule. “Knowing the blackout times in advance, I can at least plan my housework and orders,” she says. “It is hard, but life must go on.”