Why the “Venice of the East” retains its charm!

[Inspire]

Why the “Venice of the East” retains its charm!

Gerry Carter

 

 

Reports of serious flooding in Bangkok on Monday – and the inevitable horrendous traffic that followed – will have got residents thinking about some of the events in the past when the city ground to a standstill.

 

And not just that – there will be fears that official claims the 2011 inundation won’t be repeated sound all too familiar to comments made five years ago in September 2011 that there would not be a major problem for Krung Thep.

 

Back then, although the central area of the city was saved, many ofthe outlying suburbs were under floodwater over a meter deep for months. Surrounding areas north of the city were underwater over two meters deep from October to December 2011.

 

You don’t have to be a long term resident of the capital to have many tales to tell about flooding and while the 2011 event is the worst in most people’s memory it is only one of many classic floods to hit Bangkok over the years.

 

And with the stories have come the classic pictures and wacky events that stick in the memory.

 

This week we saw fun sights like a woman getting a pizza delivered to a car in gridlock while locals were perturbed to see a noodle vendor washing the dishes in the floodwater. Then “experts” announced the reasons for the floods – mainly that the drains cannot cope with the level of water deposited in the monsoon rains and the fact that development of more properties has used up areas that previously acted as water retention points.

 

I was in Bangkok in 1986 when the heaviest rainfall on record up to that point occurred in a seven hour period during the night of May 5/6. We woke up to find the entire city under about four feet of water.

 

Myself and some friends had been looking forward to a planned trip to Koh Samet all week and it was now Saturday. We were young and carefree and a bit of water was not going to stand in our way. We hoisted our bags onto our backs and trudged all the way from the area around the Malaysia Hotel in Soi Ngam Duplee, Rama 4 to Ekamai bus station. The water was waste to chest deep most of the way and very little transport was moving at all. A few buses ploughed through he main roads.

 

Thousands of cars were abandoned in the streets. We made it after about a two hour walk and got to Ban Phe where no one was going across to the island because of the dangerous waters churned up by storms. We managed to persuade a man to take us and armed with a bottle of Mekhong the three of us plus the captain and another man left the harbor. As soon as we got into open water we should have turned back.

 

To this day it is the single most reckless thing I think I have ever done and we were lucky not to have drowned. At one point the roof literally blew off the boat and we all had to jump up and grab it to stop it flying off.

 

Full story: http://www.inspirepattaya.com/lifestyle/venice-east-retains-charm/

 

 

 

-- © Copyright Inspire Pattaya 2016-10-09

[anotheruser]

This article is better than the average Inspire article.

[williamgeorgeallen]

venice of the east, nice. no need to call it flooding right my general?

[Borzandy]

Please note the as##ole using a jet ski ...

[DSJPC]

and it ain't gonna get any better, folks!...Thai authorities can create committees, focus groups, expensive "studies", ad nauseum, but it ain't gonna do a damn thing!!!

 

Bangkok is below sea level (just like Venice and New Orleans) and until they spend billions of dollars, will remain so!

[zd1]

I remember the flooding in 1994 they called it the rain of a thousand years in the press at the time. I was in soi suan plu when it started raining and I waited for 3 hours but it didn't stop and I wanted to go home to soi sri bam phen so I walked back through waist deep water which had been a road 3 hours previous.

[Enoon]

List of places called Venice of the East - Wikipedia, the free ..

 

Google it first and click "images" before you go to the entry.

 

Lovely.