Hitch a lift with an army truck heading across Pinklao Bridge, which spans the swollen Chao Phraya River near the Grand Palace, and you descend into the grim, half-deserted waterworld that is now western Bangkok. The runoff from months of catastrophic flooding in central Thailand began inundating outlying districts of the capital last week. The water is inexorably creeping south and, as it combines with this weekend’s unusually high tides, threatens to inundate many districts of Bangkok.
The Pinklao area was hit hard. Its once traffic-choked roads are now rivers of stinking, chest-high water strewn with garbage. The army truck I ride on is packed with local residents either fleeing the area — most have already left — or bringing back supplies. Its passage creates a bow wave which slaps against abandoned storefronts and rolls down canal-like sidestreets plied by a motley flotilla of rowboats, canoes, inflatable dinghies, and makeshift rafts. (See pictures of Thailand’s rising floodwaters.)
One of the truck’s passengers is a tour guide called Adisak Boonsarn. “I’ve never seen anything like it,” he says. “It’s like a tsunami has come.” Today, he is heading for his swamped village outside Bangkok, to survey what’s left of his house and possessions. The 25-kilometer journey will take him 5 hours — by truck, by boat, and by wading through chest-deep water. Adisak abandoned the house two weeks ago, dispatched his wife and children to a dry and distant province, and began sleeping on his office floor in Bangkok with other employees. Now the approaching floods might evict him again. Adisak regards this as a minor inconvenience compared to the suffering in the provinces. “Some people are living on their roofs,” he says.
