The Waiting Game

A contributor to an online discussion thread about the Thailand flood situation said that it is “like watching a train wreck in slow motion.” For two months, an immense volume of water—estimated as equivalent to the amount of water in Lake Ontario—has been slowly, agonizingly, creeping toward the Gulf of Thailand. Standing in its way, and slowing its advance, is the city of Bangkok, capital of Thailand, and home to more than 8 million people. Despite the best, and some would argue, incompetent efforts of the government, sections of the city are systematically falling prey to the advancing wall of water. Its slow speed is due to the flatness of the terrain, which has a slope well less than one degree.

After three weeks of conflicting reports, we now realize that flooding in our area of the city is inevitable. Roadway ditches are filling, klongs, or canals that criss-cross the city are overflowing, and drainage pipes are backing up. Today we saw the first street in our village accept water from the swollen klong nearby, and observed numerous side streets flooded as we traveled to school on an errand. We are now at the southern border of the advancing flood waters.

An odd atmosphere prevails. Five hundred have died of flood related accidents including drowning and electrocution, thousands have been displaced, vast untold agricultural areas have been submerged, industries paralyzed. Visions of people wading waist deep through the flooded streets dominate television screens everywhere, and yet in this small island of central Bangkok, life goes on as usual in a surreal alternate world. Patrons sit in Starbucks with laptops open, restaurants run normally, residents of this well-known mooban for which taxi drivers need only its name to drive you there, go about their business: children play badminton in the street, cars are washed, dogs walked, joggers circle the several lakes as if nothing out of the ordinary is happening just a few miles away. And yet there is an air of anxiety and tension that is woven into the shopping trips and foot massages. The phrase naam tuam is on everyone’s lips. “Flood” (literally, “water rising”). It is the topic of conversation at each encounter.

Everyone now knows it is coming, and yet we seem to be frozen with indecision and uncertainty. Maybe tomorrow we will hear more. Maybe we will escape with only a little water. But that hope dwindles by the day as more people erect sandbag barriers around their houses, roadside vendors appear selling rubber boots and plastic boats, and large trucks park along the major road, Ramkhamhaeng (“The King’s Road”) loaded with hundreds of sand bags selling for 30 baht (one dollar) each. I walk to the trucks and purchase enough to cover the downstairs drains and plug the toilets, just in case, and load them into the trunk of a taxi. The driver laughs and says “Naam ja tuam:” Flood is coming. It is an enduring Thai trademark that no matter how serious things get, no matter how inconvenienced they become, Thai people are able to keep a positive outlook. I don’t know how they do it, but I’m glad they do. It helps the rest of us cope.

Adding to the otherworld feel is our school administrators’ decision to reopen the school this week. The timing could hardly be worse, or the decision more puzzling. After three weeks of canceled classes as the flood approaches, they now announce—as the streets around the school begin to fill—that we will resume classes on Thursday. Students and faculty who have decided to move to safer ground are now told that they are to return. As if to underscore their “flood denial,” ground crews put final touches on the new artificial turf soccer field, paint the parking lots and plant new flowers on the lawns. Perhaps by not believing the potential of the gigantic body of water surrounding them, it can be somehow persuaded to move around the school, much as Moses parted the Red Sea. I don’t know; it strains the boundaries of reason.

Meanwhile, the small communities along the klongs see their homes inundated as the water moves over the banks in its relentless march to the sea. Our little island is next in its path. We make contingency plans, contacting kennels outside of the city to keep our pets safe should we have to evacuate. Will the flood be as bad here as it has been to the north, or will the dikes, canal dredging and directed flow spare us? We should know in a couple of days. We sit and wait, and prepare for school.