This article examines changes in livelihood strategies in response to flooding. It does so on the basis of a household survey which was undertaken in three provinces in north central Vietnam. All households in the survey were regularly affected by flooding, but only poor households experience a long term negative effect of floods. The research showed that a high impact of natural disasters is correlated with decreases in income over time. As the disaster relief offered by the authorities is marginal compared to economic losses, some households react by increasing off-farm incomes (including remittances from overseas migrated household members). We observed that the poor households do not switch to off-farm income strategies in response to income losses; this is perhaps because they have inadequate skills. However, on average households in our survey are becoming richer over time, despite the impact of flooding in the provinces. The article ends by looking at the vulnerability-resilience debate concluding that the poorer households could enter a vulnerability loop, unless new strategies to cope with natural hazards are suggested.