Flash floods – just the latest in eco-tourism

CHIANG MAI: -- Chiang Mai may have found itself a new and unlikely tourist attraction, which no glossy brochure has ever featured before – flash floods. While being evacuated from a teacher’s residence at Montfort College, which was heavily inundated on Sunday morning, Andrew Maloney, an Australian tourist, waded happily through deep water.

“To me a flood is a strange event. I have never had direct experience of such a disaster. It’s so exciting,” he told The Nation while gazing in awe at the flooding in Muang district.

Maloney had just moved from Mae Hong Son where he saw a restaurant swept away by heavy water and a collapsed road.

Maloney is not the only tourist to experience a thrill from the flash flood. An American tourist who identified herself only as Jane was bubbling with excitement at the chance to ride in a heavy military truck being used to help tourists in hotels on Chang Klan.

“It is an impressive experience to be transported by a military truck,” she said, describing it as a highlight of her first visit to Chiang Mai.

About 400 foreign tourists were staying in seven medium-sized hotels on Chang Klan Road near the Night Bazaar. A military unit laid on four military trucks for tourists who wanted to enter or leave the area. Tour agencies also provided 4-wheel-drive cars for those who wanted to explore tourist attractions outside the flooded area.

Not slow to miss an opportunity, some locals quickly laid on their own trucks to run tourists around the flooded areas, charging them between Bt100 and Bt200 a trip. It upset a few tourists, though, as there were no signs advising them of which trucks were free and which were not.

--The Nation 2005-08-16

“It is an impressive experience to be transported by a military truck,” she said, describing it as a highlight of her first visit to Chiang Mai.

Really? I didn't think Chiang Mai was such a bad place that it doesn't offer more that? That's a nightmare statement for the TAT.

Edited August 16, 200520 yr by sriracha john

Fire and water make good servants, but poor masters.