I bring this to you off the cuff and unedited as the internet providers have screwed us over due to the floods, or in this case, the lack there of.
Unfortunately I now write to you from an internet cafe next to a main canal that is directly connected to the Chao Prayha River. Even more unfortunate is that my new house is just down the street. I have woken up and taken a walk down to the river every day since I moved in and found the water level to be unchanged. However this morning the river was at the brink. There are groups of high school students out on the street with instruments waiting to be picked up by vans full of volunteers headed for the refugee camps. Other vans go out to the outer areas of Bangkok where there has been five feet of water covering all the roads for weeks. Some of our friends have left and gone south. One friend went to Phnom Phen where a heavy rain flooded the street his hotel was on. He waded through waste deep water full of filth and all the while his street back here in Bangkok was bone dry, we will see how long that lasts though. One teacher I work with took a plane back to England with no clear intention of ever returning, I suppose I should say one teacher I worked with.
In spite of all the impending doom life is mostly rather normal. Aside from all the free time and the lack of necessities at the grocery everything else seems to be quite normal. The motorbikes and taxis are operating, the public transit is mostly unaffected in central Bangkok, all the banks are still open and if it weren't for the stupid politicians people probably wouldn't be so wound up about everything. Most of the people we know literally saw the flood a day before it actually arrived.
"Hey Kevin how's it going?"
"Pretty good."
"You coming out to Billy's birthday tonight?"
"Naw I probably shouldn't, I can see the water down at the end of my soi."
"Oh shit man."
"Yeah, I want to be here when it gets to my house, make sure the sandbags hold."
"Alright man, good luck."
His house's drive way has now turned into a two foot deep kitty pool.
For us there is still a silver lining. Despite being poor and bored we can always go for a swim. And since our apartment is slightly higher than the rest of the area we probably won't actually get water up to our doorstep. If we do though it will be a long time coming and I'll finally be able to curse the banks and the shopping malls like everyone else has been doing. There is talk that if they shuttered the big businesses and closed the banks for four days but let it pass through the city center then the outlying areas would only be under water for a matter of weeks rather than months. The water would likely pass through the business districts in a few days and then business could resume as normal. This is not how it has played out though and northern areas, two of which my schools are in, have had six to nine feet of water for well over a month and there are minimal signs of improvement.
Last night we went out and got chicken wings and drank some beer. There was a promotion, buy ten get ten free. We all sat around the table, no talk of floods or disaster, and yet we were all there because school is canceled. Our Thai friend who was with us has been bumming around our houses, the refugee is what she calls herself. Her home as well as her parents home have flooded but she works near us so she stays here. Still, as we sat there in the heart of one of Bangkok's three major business districts the men were trying harder than ever to rope us into a ping pong show. The lack of tourists is the most obvious side effect that any of us have seen...well, there are also the sandbags everywhere, mostly unused as well. In the end I suppose I will be able to say that I lived through the greatest flood Thailand has seen in over two generations, and that is pretty damn cool.
