It’s been awhile since I posted an Ubiquitous Plastic Stool Shot! and with the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration warning that all districts of the capital will be hit by heavy rainstorms today and tomorrow it seemed like an appropriate time to post this one from my visit during the major flood of 2011. Which within the area of the city frequently haunted by tourists was a pretty poor excuse for a flood. If I recall correctly, it didn’t rain that entire trip. But in anticipation of the flood waters coming, half the town fled to higher elevations, sandbags out numbered 7/11’s, and everyone who could possibly come up with a way to make a few baht off the disaster did so.

Not that the rainfall over the next few days is supposed to reach the flood levels of 2011; they are expecting hourly rainfalls of over 2” Thursday and Friday which means major flooding thanks to the city’s woefully inadequate drainage system, but then that’s not an unusual occurrence during the rainy season. The real problem will come later, in October, when the water from up north makes it way to Bangkok. Flooding in Ayutthaya province has already damaged more than 1,000 homes.

Bangkokians take the normal rainy season flooding in stride, finding a convenient overhang to wait out the worst of the rainfall and then sloshing down the street to their destination once the skies clear. Tourists scoop up cheap umbrellas to stay dry and then discover what the monsoon rains’ opinion is of 99 baht umbrellas made in China. The BMA asks everyone to avoid heavily trafficked areas, everyone assumes that warning is directed at someone else and streets that normally look like a parking lot turn into a diorama of gridlock frozen in time. If the rains hit in the early evening, it kills the business on Soi Twilight. Patpong can look like a ghost town. And if you are foolish enough to brave a visit, the night market vendors rachet up their normal aggressiveness to unheard of heights.

Chatuchak, where the Weekend Market is held, has been singled out as one of the areas expected to be hardest hit over the next few days. If the weathermen are right, that shouldn’t be a problem for the weekend’s business. Which is a shame. I visited the market with my buddy Dave during one rainy weekend and while most of the vendors were there, few customers were around. You could walk down the aisles without having to push through the normal sardine in a can like crowds. Not that anyone with half a brain would anyway. Wading through a foot of flood water at Chatuchak isn’t the smartest thing to do when you consider what that water holds. But then that’s why I enjoy travelling with Dave, when we are together our combined IQ drops into the single digits. But we gave the vendors someone to laugh at, and the few purchases we made were all at great prices. Not taking advantage of the obviously mentally ill must be a form of merit making.

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