On Dry Ground in Khao San Road

Here's some advice I gave on the Wanderlust site on the reality of tourism on the ground in Bangkok.

They took out the part about the international airport being unlikely to close unless there is an imminent zombie invasion. Not sure why.

The Whales Are Coming from Inside the House

A friend of mine stumbled over this brilliant animation about the Bangkok floods today.

It's wonderful.

The Chao Phraya River Seeps into Banglamphu

I went over to the river tonight, to see just how bad the flooding was in my part of town.

And I was amazed at what I saw. In a good way. When life gives the people of Banglamphu lemons, they make swimming pools.

Pretending En Masse

After the flurry of news and if-it-bleed-it-leads sensational flood coverage, I had tried to make some sort of flood preparations. But how do you prepare for a possible flood of water when you live on the fourth story of a hotel? The supermarkets were bare of bottled water, so I hoarded the water the hotel left me every day. I have a mini-fridge in my room, but if we were inundated with water, wouldn't the electricity be out? I bought some Oreos and peanuts, but they looked good so I ate them. I put credit on my iPhone, but I then used it up SMS messaging with Stephanie from Singapore when she was in the Bangkok airport en route home from Bhutan.

I did keep my laptop, phone, and camera charged.

"Why didn't you leave," asked Toby up in Chiang Mai, once the buses were full and it was too late to evacuate. He'd been following the news, and the stories of people who lost everything didn't jive with my personal accounts that the only water we had on the streets in Bangkok's center was from a leaky food cart.

Why indeed?

It didn't seem like I'd gain much by leaving. My flight to Sydney, which would connect me on a Virgin Blue flight to Perth, is on November 1. And the big airport isn't going underwater, barring something catastrophic like an unexpected zombie invasion or the moon crashing into the earth. What if I evacuated and then in the madness of people returning to Bangkok, I couldn't get back in time for my plane?

Worldwide Shortage of Zebra Shirts (Crisis Mode)

One thing I really needed to get while I was in Bangkok was more zebra T-shirts.

I'd had no idea that zebras were a good-luck animal until I'd started stumbling over them at spirit houses in June. I'd gamely bought some zebra shirts and I adored them, but like any $5 T-shirt, they had a short shelf life.

I headed out to Chatuchak Market on the #3 bus. This was an interesting ride today as I got on the first #3 bus that came, and the conductor told me to get off. "No, no, you want #3 bus!"

Er. Okay. 

The next #3 bus took ages to show up, but at least I didn't get thrown off again. I need to remember to walk over a block to catch the #524 heading north for next time...except that will probably be in a year or more, by which time I'll have completely forgotten that I desperately need the good luck of the Thai zebra.

The bus got out to Chatuchak quickly, and we only passed one instance of flooding. I hightailed it over to Kamphaeng Phet metro which is next to (and weirdly, in) the more interesting indie clothing shops of Chatuchak and...

gasp

The zebra T-shirt store was shut.

Maybe the shop owner is out building a retaining wall and waterproofing his home, I thought as I glumly walked through the puppy and monitor lizard section of Chatuchak, before catching the #524 back to Banglamphu.

Three Feet High and Rising

I caught the Chao Phraya river taxi down to Tha Thien—that's the pier by Wat Po—to meet my friend Lynne. The few of you who have been reading since 2001 may recall Lynne from when she dropped by to visit in Berlin in May, 2001, or from when we met up a few months earlier in Cambodia and Vietnam during MariesWorldTour.com 2001.

Lynne was in town en route from Myanmar to the UK (the Myanmar boycott has recently been lifted, did you know? Mindful tourism is now being encouraged). I headed down to Tha Thien to meet her and her traveling companion for a drink and dinner.

And when I got off the river taxi, I jumped off the boat and onto the pier as usual, along with six others. Two Dutch tourists walked ahead of me. Two tourists behind me were good sports and followed the Dutch guy off the boat, but two more saw what lie ahead and got right back on.

Unexpected Encounter

"Whoa, the river!" I couldn't contain my amazement when I walked up to the Banglamphu Pier. The pier itself floats, rising with the level of water in the river. But the walkway leading to the pier was submerged. Bangkok was in a state of moderate emergency. Would we be flooded or not?

The woman selling me the ticket (the river taxi had gone up between July and my last visit in September—a ticket is now 15 baht) nodded and smiled. She'd been looking at this all day and she was still amazed.

I tiptoed over the water, using the sandbags as stepping stones across the flooded walkway—I hadn't expected this, so I was wearing my leather sandals and not my Tevas—and climbed up to the pier.

The pier floats, but the surrounding items do not. The pier was so high that this street light was at head level. One false move, and--WHAM--tourist head meets street light.

A Sense of Urgency

On my first full day back in Bangkok, I sat in Coffee World in the Buddy Lodge complex on Khao San Road, my usual pre-lunch haunt. I'm at my most productive between breakfast and lunch, provided I'm out of the house and have a late-morning coffee in front of me. I needed to get to the supermarket to pick up soap and buy credit for my phone, and I needed to go to Chatuchak Market to replace my worn-out zebra T-shirts, but those could wait until I'd done some email housekeeping and processed some files for one of my freelance jobs.

The morning was bright, the sun brilliant. This wasn't what I'd expected when I'd flown back from Bali yesterday. I'd known there was flooding—major flooding—in Thailand, but Bangkok had mostly been left alone. When I'd left it in mid-September, the monsoon season had brought in reliable, dramatic rains. Same as every year.

But the images of other parts of Thailand were scary. Water up to the roofs of houses, people driving boats through towns.

Anyway, I had to get back to Bangkok. My British friend Lynne was due in on the 22nd of October for one night—she'd been one of the first on the ball when the tourism boycott against Myanmar had been lifted and was on her way home—and I was going to meet her for a meal, plus my onward round-the-world ticket was out of Bangkok on November 1st. Sooner or later, all roads lead through Bangkok in this part of the world. Anyway, floods seemed less scary than Bali's 6.0 earthquake we'd had a few weeks ago. That had left me a little paranoid.

I sat outside in the smoking section of Coffee World. I hate the smell of smoke, but the Arctic-level air conditioning inside isn't tolerable for too long, and I planned on being here until I had to pee or my laptop battery ran down, whichever came first.