Flood

Have you ever seen a good movie and years later they made a sequel? And with some many bad ones around you wonder if that sequel will be as good as the original movie? Well, in Thailand flooding has become such a sequel to me. Just about five years ago on my first trip to Thailand my brother and I got into a flood in southern Thailand. It was a hell of a trip back then. Now, with the raining season actually almost over, we have flooding again, but this time right in the back yard.

How to make a good sequel? Give it its own good story. In that way, this sequel must be a good one. Rains in the north have brought much water to the river that flows right behind our house. We had already noticed the new walls and dams a couple of days ago that had not been there five years earlier. Now the news spoke of flood warnings and the river rose be the minute. And by the minute we could see walls of sand sacks build up everywhere.

The day before, my brother went to get his hair cut at about the coolest place you can have that done. Imagine a 19th century barbers chair in the middle of a rotten bamboo shed. Wires hang around the shed and deliver electricity from somewhere. An old mirror hangs inbetween fading pages from magazines with asian hair styles and pictures of the barbers favourite bikini model. on the shed's walls. The barber is actually Tuks uncle, but my brother came to not let his hair cut, but rather to borrow the machine to do it himself. He shouldn't have. Taking the wrong top he cut his quite short into a bad G.I. style. He now looks quite like our father with everyone joking about it.

A dozen couple of meters behind the shop flowed the river behind a new dam. Another uncle of Tuk's took us there to show how and to where the water levels would rise. Today they have reached their mark. We went out in the Honda to capture the flood on film tape this time. All khlongs and rivers where filled to the top of the walls and dams with dirty brown fast moving and raging waters. Is was only centimeters that separated the roadbed of the bridges from the water. In some places, the walls couldn't hold the water back and the many lower properties where completely under water. Many places they were still piling sand sacks, but they could not hold the water back, just slow it down.

It was centimeters, too, that separated our house from catastrophe. But the wall didn't breach and the water stopped rising just before hitting the top of the dam right behind the house. We left for Bangkok the next day, not knowing, if the levels would nomalize or not. Fortunately, they did making this sequel less exiting than the original, but saving us from a lot of problems.