…I’ve Run Out Of Adjectives.
I know what torrential rain looks like. I’ve lived through a typhoon in Hong Kong and various hurricanes on the US East Coast. I’ve seen torrential rain in Malaysia, and also here in Thailand. But what happened over the past few days was three degrees above “torrential.”
It’s been a non-stop deluge with rain coming down in sheets. So may I invent new words and say we’ve had “sheety weather with delugional rain”? If not that, then what? “Torrential” no longer works.
The thing that boggled my mind was that it never eased off. You know, you get storms that vary between heavy and torrential and at times one or two degrees beyond that, and then it goes back to plain vanilla heavy. But this was just continuously delugional. Sixty centimeters of the stuff in twenty-four hours.
And this was after two major storms over the past few weeks. Needless to say – but I’ll say it anyways – there’s extensive flooding. Not just here, but the whole of southern Thailand. From Chumpon about 300kms north, right down to the Malaysian border. Well, actually, beyond. Down into the Malay Peninsular.
My provincial capital Nakhon Si Thammarat is under a meter of water. The airport is closed for at least two days. That’s a first. Beyond there, Trang town (remember the cakes) is under two meters of water. I feel lucky to be dry.
I used past tense about the rain because, for the moment, it’s more or less stopped. So, a couple of hours ago I ventured out on an emergency errand. I ran out of beer. Plus a few other lesser-essentials.
I tried three roads before I could get anywhere near Khanom town, and that’s only 2kms away…
I thought about heading north up to the small Tesco Lotus Express, but that road was completely closed – as opposed to only open to us idiots with trucks.
So, I headed out onto the 401 and down to Sichon. The 401 is raised, which meant the water on the fields, that now look like lakes, was only lapping at the road edges, but not over…
The large Tesco Lotus in Sichon is now an island. Koh Tesco? This is from the parking lot…
Then there were more surprises. Most ATMs were “Off Line” or had run out of moola. Not good when you’re thinking of doing a week’s shopping. Even Dunkin’ Donuts had nothing to dunk.
Then I saw the price of the food. Anything fresh was at least double normal price. I picked up a lettuce and thought about calling the bank for a loan. At least they hadn’t – quite – run out of beer, and it was the normal price. So the obvious solution was to buy less fruit’n’veg and more beer. You have a problem with that?
Did I mention the eggs? Only available in boxes of twenty or more. What am I supposed to do with twenty eggs? Soft-boiled for breakfast, hard-boiled for lunch, omelette for supper, then what? Google “Fun with eggs.”
And I guess this is why the Sichon traffic lights were out…
Just to add to the fun, when I arrived home I could see from the debris strewn around that at some point the sea must have reached the end of my road. Maybe it happened during the night. But hey, what I didn’t see, I don’t need to worry about. Right?
Now, we are due one more storm tomorrow, and then the forecast promises several days of sun. Just as it did yesterday, and the day before, and…