Crazy Flood on Huay Kaew Road, Views From the Window

Around 6PM on Sunday, J. and I headed out to the walking street market in the center of town. But our progress was slowed on Huay Kaew Road near Central Kad Suan Kaew Mall due to the storm drains overflowing and flooding the road with between 3 and 10 inches of brown, smelly water. The murk was deepest near the curbs, forcing all traffic to move to the inner lanes. Motorbike riders hiked up their pants and either propped their feet high on their bike like stuntmen or got wet feet. By the time we realized the road had flooded, there was no turning back. I moved the bike slowly, trying to stay moving as there wasn’t any good spot to put my foot down. But the traffic had backed up. I rested my right foot on the high inner curb. Occasionally a car would pull past me and send a wave of water over my foot.

Motorist onthe eastbound side of the road.

It took about about 10 minutes to get through. We went to the market and gorged on cheap street food. It was around 9:30PM by the time we headed back. The road was flooded even more. Now all lanes were deep in water; the curbside lanes swallowing half a tire. We pulled off the road and watched the commotion. Cars weren’t phased. There were two kinds of motorbike drivers through. Some would barrel around the corner and enter the flood without hesitation. The others would slow down and pull to the shoulder near the water’s edge. After assessing the situation, the driver would either go forward or attempt a crazy u-turn into the rattled traffic coming out of the flood water.

Westbound side of the road at night.

Here’s a video I filmed of the road:

J. and I took a u-turn and went home another way. Another road along Plan B was flooded too, so we moved to Plan C.

While it may appear that J. and I are always out and about seeing amazing things all day, we are actually inside the apartment a lot. When you spend enough time looking out the same window, you start to notice repetitive things. J. recently put together a photo montage of different things we see out our apartment window in Wat Jet Yod. They’ll give you a better idea of what our life here is really like. Here are two cropped samples:

Airplanes.

Icecream men.

I really like these photos. I noticed she was taking a lot of photos out the window, but I wasn’t sure why.

You can find the rest at her excellent blog.