Flooded Community

Another walk brought friends and me to the other side of our development, to a klong-side community that has existed for over a century. As we walked, people smiled and waved, stopping to chat, and inviting us to see their flood defenses (Some worked, some did not). It was quite a dichotomy; leaving the dry middle class mooban and stepping literally only a few meters away through a door in the wall that divides it from a poor mooban in which everyone was dealing with the flood. It was sobering to think of how "we" (the "haves") have been anxiously wondering whether or not we will get any flood waters, and our neighbors (the "have nots") have been in it for at least two weeks, and expect it to get deeper. Our neighbors along the klong seem to be handling it better than any of us would, or will.

Working when you can, with what you can, on whatever you can build above the water.

Wooden planks across piled sand bags form a temporary walkway from homes to the main

elevated concrete walkway along the klong.

Potting plants will have to wait for a while!

Normally a quiet place to sit and chat with neighbors, it is now a place which offers 

visitors a subject for photos.

The only place that remains dry is the community mosque 

(I have always wondered where the calls to prayer were coming from). 

These men greeted us and asked us--the two of us who are male of course--to have tea.

It's a guy thing.

Vacationing in the 'Hood

When consulting a calendar as a holiday approaches, many expats cast a wide net, traveling to exotic destinations that cost a fraction of what they would if commencing from one's home country. We are no exception: we have had the good fortune of experiencing various cultures and geographic locales of Southeast Asia, booking flights to rather short hops that take us to interesting places. Lately, as the slow flood waters approach and surround Bangkok, we have remained in our home, and as default, have struck out on very different kinds of trips, all within walking distance from our house. What we have discovered is that we have unique and exotic places right in our own neighborhood. Let me take you on a walking tour of communities that are within a few minutes of our house, but which we had not discovered until recently. I have compiled a visual tour of two ramblings near Sammakorn Village. We did not know how little we knew about our own neighborhood.

Cats and "aungs," rain water containers for the dry season,

two mainstays of any Thai country village. Country life can be found tucked away

in one of the world's great bustling cities.

We walked into this extended family's world quite by accident and were invited to celebrate Eid al Adha with them. What a delightful morning we had! This young woman is studying to be a teacher. We had much to talk about.

 

These teens so wanted to have their photo taken, but were too shy to ask. 

So I asked them! Their faces tell you their reply.

There are many instances where time seems to stand still. 

This was one of those moments.

This man was very proud of his fighting rooster, which he was bathing.

Young children who we thought came to see the visitors, 

but in reality wanted the candy we brought!

These cattle were not for milking. Little did we--or they--know that two of 

them would be sacrificed at the mosque as part of the Eid celebration.

The meat was distributed to families in the community.

Few people are as popular as the snow cone man!

Only a few hundred yards away from one of Bangkok's busiest thoroughfares 

are peaceful country scenes.

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.