Checkin in

I was always well-prepared.

For all of you waiting with bated breath for my next words, all two or three of you, I suppose I must not disappoint. Even if you never write, you never call. But ah, yes, the flood.

As it was slow in coming, so will it be slow in going. My only personal experience of it was when I rode my bike around the edges of the city, now nearly two weeks ago, and got my feet wet going through Nuanjan Road near the townhouse. The water was about a foot or two deep, and rising, but very slowly. It rose a bit more, then just stopped. Now it's trickling out, but verrrry slowly.


"They" say it will be a month before things are more or less dry. Who knows? Haven't been able to trust much of anything they've said. But it seems to me things are inching back to normalcy. Schools are supposed to open Dec. 1. Other things besides the flood are reported on TV. Cars are leaving the high-rises and, I suppose, going back where they came from.


Fallout from the events: 1) environmental . . . polluted fresh water pours into the sea and destroys a lot of marine life. 2) political . . . as usual, when there's a crisis, the party in power gets hammered, no matter what. I have no love for the Pheua Thai party or the Chinawat family, but I do feel some sympathy for the PM, she was over her head with this, but I don't think she deserves quite all the grief she's getting. 3) planning for the future . . . at least a few are trying to figure out how to deal with flooding in the future. I'll give you some links to articles dealing with this.


For the environmental fallout, check out this article in The Nation. I wonder not only about the marine environment, but what after-effects there might be right here on the ground. So far haven't had any raging cholera epidemics, that's good.


The political problems: there's a decent article in the Wall Street Journal you might want to look at. A little more depth is provided in one written for the World Politics Review, but I had to sign up for a free trial in order to read it.


Most interesting was a plan put forward by the Science Faculty of Chulalongkorn University. It proposes construction of a HUGE flood bypass system starting at Chai Nat, well north of Ayutthaya. Map below:

 Also, parliament is now considering moving the capital! A study on the feasibility of moving out of Bangkok altogether is being proposed. This comes on the heels of all sorts of experts saying that Bangkok is sinking, and in 50 years will be underwater no matter what! Hah! Maybe I shouldn't have bought property here, after all. But . . . 50 years . . . at my age, I don't think there's a real problem here. 

I expect my next post will be on another topic. I sure hope so, this has been a long haul. Slow water torture, think I used that phrase. It works. But in general, I'm doing fine, life is good. Jes' chuggin' along, here, at least for now on all cylinders. Till soon, ta ta again!

Izzat da circumferentially-challenged gentlewomon?

Flood water has receded in 11 Bangkok districts;
Bangkok deputy gov says city's main roads will be dry in two weeks.

Well, I've been listening. I believe I hear a faint descant. I know I said it once before, but I do believe now that the flood has reached its peak, and I'm still dry. And (by sheer luck) my townhouse out on Nuanjan is still dry . . . tho it's still surrounded by increasingly rotting water.

The monitor lizards are out in force. Tee saw a bezillion of them from the army truck that waded her in to work today. You can see from this picture that while this may not be a great event for a lot of people, it's like old home week for the komodo dragon relations:

At the condo, the parking garage is just starting to open up. For weeks people have been parking here, because the floors of the garage are well above any possible flood level. When there's no space to park, so, well . . . 

The Thais have some very creative ways of dealing with modern problems. E.g., to park in a crowded parking garage. You get stuck behind someone waiting for a space, can’t get around him to look for one yourself, when you do you have to go up another floor, and another . . . . Anyhow over there if there aren’t spaces, you pull up behind a row of parked cars, lengthwise, so that you block a bunch of them from getting out. Then you set your wheels straight, put your car in neutral,  lock the doors, and go wherever you’re going. When someone finds your car in the way of their getting out, they just roll it out of the way, then back again when they’re done. I bet that seems bizarre. Wouldn’t work in the U.S., no way. But here, they don't even have to leave a note. Anyhow, my garage was like that, every floor, for several weeks. Now it's thinning out. Soon, je crois, it will be back to what it was, maybe 25% of capacity.

So I think we made it. But it's still gonna be a long time before things get back to normal. First of all, the water is stagnant and rotting, and leaving very slowly. Then, it's gonna take maybe a month to drain out. Then people start cleaning up. 

Wow. Well, that's all the news today from Lake WoeNotGoneYet. More soon.

 Read all about it at wrapping up. 

A flood of awareness

Kids came for the fun, adult vols were pruning congesting vegetation 

Greetings, all. It's been too long since I last wrote, but I've been trying to avoid Catholic or Jewish guilt, though, really, why should I have to? I'm neither Catholic nor Jewish. Maybe guilt is just flat-out part of human nature.

Anyhow over the last months I've had so many thoughts and experiences I felt needed to be laid out and articulated properly for interested people to see that I just . . . felt . . . GUILTY AS HELL about not doing it. Hey, now what do I do with the "hell" part of this? Metaphysics again. See, writing is just too hard! (But the translation project is doing great guns, giving me some real focus). See, I'm still just plain doing too much stuff!

But now, with the floods, I suppose it's inevitable.

This, even though I am just recovering from a mild second bout with pneumonia. I contracted it down South in tsunami country, where I've been for the past couple of weeks immersing myself in another writing project (an eco-volunteer program, that's where these 2 pictures are from.)

Me w/Youth International Volunteers and Andaman Discoveries Staff on Koh Phrathong

The only other time I got pneumonia was three years ago, in exactly the same southern places, doing the same sorts of things. Exciting, productive, fun things, but that somehow exposed me to a tropical germ my body hasn't learned to handle right. Some freaky coincidence.

But I'm over it now, breathing freely and full of energy, and here to tell you about another naturally destructive event I'm now perfectly positioned to report on: the imminent Bangkok flooding.

I'm a latecomer to the topic, because of my trip and consequent derailment, but maybe I can give some perspective, since I've got two properties of my own on the ground here and am watching them closely. One is a townhouse towards the very furthest northeast boundary of the city, and the other is a 12th-floor condo a kilometer or two from the Chao Phraya River, which sluices and twists through the Bangkok Metropolitan Area very much as the Mississippi does for Greater New Orleans, each ending in a nearby ocean.

New Orleans had Katrina. Bangkok is about to experience the worst flooding in all of Thai history.



Brief background: If you've been following the news, you'll know the flooding has actually been going on since mid-September. The rainy season here started late, but came in with an unheard-of intensity in August, and just didn't stop coming. The tributary rivers of the northern mountains swelled to record-setting volume, first flooding the beautiful northern city of Chiangmai, and scaring the bejeezis of everyone downstream. Downstream fears became a horrible reality, as water poured from everywhere into the Chao Phraya basin and had no way to get out quickly enough, so they spread out . . . and out . . . and out, engulfing huge chunks of Central Thailand, and now is just sitting there, dribbling slowly out as even more water comes in to push from behind.
Hundreds have died, but the pace of the water gives time for plenty of warning, so the greatest loss has been to homes, belongings, crops, transport, and commerce in general.


Many major cities and towns are still in great distress. And these are all waiting for the water to drain out . . . through . . . Bangkok, of course!


Bangkok, of course, has had some history of flooding, and because of this has built around itself an elaborate system of canals, dikes, and drainage canals to divert floodwaters around the city--ironically at the same time as filling in most of the canals which more than a century ago gave rise to the moniker of "Venice of the East," turning them into impressive congestive, polluted, and poorly-maintained city streets.

This system worked pretty well at keeping the levels down, and was steadily becoming more efficient. The problem now is that there is just too much water behind the walls, and this is combining with a seasonal tide surge, highest of the year, which is predicted to come in from the opposite direction over the next four days and breach the defenses, inundating Bangkok.

The government is trying to control things somewhat by opening floodgates in certain areas first, telling everyone well beforehand when and where. It's now pretty generally accepted that some effects of the flood will reach everywhere in the city, but heroic steps are being taken to protect power supplies, and the SkyTrain and  subway transportation systems.

Right now it's dry most places, but it's also definitely here in some places, witness the "minimart" and "styrofoam" photos posted here which another former Peace Corps guy shared with me.
Anyhow today areas around both my townhouse and my condo are bone-dry.

It's late. I started late, and have been writing this thing entirely off the cuff, after being released from the hospital today. I feel fine, thank you, just a little tired. I'll continue talking about developments tomorrow, and hopefully have time to touch on some other topics as well. Be well. I wish I could talk to each of you in person . . . you're welcome to comment here, or e-mail me, for that matter . . . ! Till soon, then.

Next installment: Real or imagined?