Flood!

[baht&sold]

It's raining, I've caught a flu (time to waste;) and got me to thinking....What's YOUR 'caught in a flood' experience in LOS? (land of smiles).

This season, the rain (in Bangers at least so far) has been on the light side -with the exception of last night! Other places not so lucky.

-My memorable experience was in usually sedate Hua Hin in Oct '98. Woke up in the middle of the night to what sounded like a freight train coming thru the roof!Looked out the window and was absolutely gobsmacked to see a tree, followed by other various items (& a soi dog) rushing along the soi in what was now a raging river.

The Thai guy's home at the end of the soi (artist, beside the then Melia, now Hilton) was directly in the path where it all spilled out, rushing thru his place, then cascading in a brown frothing waterfall on the pier side of his place.

Even hours later, standing at the intersection of the night market on Petchakasem,

people were in water up to the waist.

The amazing thing was, about 2 days after, it was as if nothing had occured (at least to the unknowing eye of the avg tourist). The locals all banded together and cleared away all the mud, debris etc in no time flat.

Keep in mind, this happened following a perfect, lazy beach day. Became a fan of weather.com's time lapse satellite graphic after this...

[edd]

About 10 years ago my wife and I were staying in a relatively cheap hotel called Honey Hotel on Soi 19 Suckumvit BKK.

We had a ground floor room, not very good but clean.

In the middle of the night I got up to use the toilet, when I put my feet down on the floor I found about 12 inches of water in the room.

My shoes were floating around the room and our suit case was under water.

I contacted the reception and told them about the water

They said “This happen wen it rain! What your plob-lem”

I said that I wanted a room without the extra water.

The reception said ”OK we move you tomorrow”

As you can guess I insisted that we moved that night.

[sua yai]

" Normally sedate Hua Hin" is classified as a drought area by the govt. My worst experience of flooding was during March 2001 when my parents came to visit me in HH.

Would have expected a hot climate all over much of los at that time, but HH was waist deep in flood water for over a week.

Thay had as good a time as they could, but certainly weren't prepared for swimming in sewage.

Fortunately, the town seems to have got the drainage sysyem working better than before - although I've not seen rain like it since.

Time will tell.