Surrounded by a swollen river

Landry has been volunteering with our district authorities, who monitor the low-lying points of the island as high tide approaches and then rush to fix any breaches -- literally battling back the swollen Chao Phraya river.

Another truckload of sandbags.

At the Bang Ko Bua temple on the northern tip of our island.

Pumping water from a low-lying point on the left of the above image over the dike protecting the island, into the river on the right.

Lots of fishermen are out and about these days. This guy has a battery pack in the recycled Pennzoil can on his back, and uses his two zapping prongs to knock fish out.

As for our home, we are still dry. We have had occasional problems with our water supply, which was contaminated and rationed for a spell, but it all appears to be back to normal. We have a water filter, but are boiling as well to be on the safe side.

To flood or not to flood

Our island, formed by a large loop in the Chao Phraya, was long ago quite prone to flooding. As the neighbors tell it, the inundations used to come chest high one or two days per year. Perhaps a decade or so ago, they say, a dyke was built around the island, to protect against the rising waters.

That said, this year Thailand is seeing the worst flooding in half a century, and today, the Chao Phraya river reached a record high. Some parts of the country are under 2 meters of water, and while every effort has been made to save Bangkok, areas to the north have been under water for more than a month.

There is supposed to be a high tide tomorrow or sometime over the weekend, and with waters being released from northern Thailand to ease the worst flooding, our village is expected to be plunged under water. Local authorities are not sure whether or not we'll be flooded -- perhaps knee deep, they say, but you never know.

Our neighbors, who have lived here for generations, don't seem too worried, so we're hoping that we will stay dry. Still, we've moved all our art and electronics up to higher ground, and prepared dry foods and drinking water.

I've been writing about children preparing for floods and landslides for a photo-video-text package I put together for British NGO Plan International in time for Oct. 13, Disaster Risk Reduction Day. Needless to say, I've been wishing that Plan disaster management people would come to my neighborhood to give us a few lessons. The girl above was helping only by providing good cheer.

The waters in our neighborhood canals are quite high now, and each day, we are doused in hours-long torrential rains. The thunder last night made our entire house rumble, and I nervously got out of bed much of the night to glance at the water level in our backyard canal (or klong, in Thai).

To ease our minds a bit, over the past few days, Landry and I have visited the disaster management team at our sub-district administrative office, where they are preparing sandbags.

Yes! Children were helping, too -- which, I write in my story for Plan, gives children a sense of control over a situation in which they might otherwise feel helpless. Two boys, 10 years old, and one 12, helping to tie the sandbags shut.

Landry, leaning inside the truck, volunteered with the disaster management team, which passed out sandbags to villagers most at risk, living near the river banks.

We are not among the most at-risk areas when compared with our neighbors, but when compared with Bangkok, which surrounds our island, it looks like we're going to be hit hard. On that map, our island is underneath 355 million cubic meters of "water/daily" [sic]. Actually, it was a peninsula, but one of the royal irrigation projects was the Lad Pho canal, dug across the narrow southern end so water could be rushed out to the Gulf of Thailand.

The team then headed down the road to some houses that were flooded because of heavy rains last night.

We went down a lovely wooden path...

to this house, whose ground floor was under water.

The team was pumping water out from a villager's yard...

up and over the dyke that protects the island.

Baby's got a brief respite from the rain, but still needs an umbrella as a parasol.

The hood

We live in a neighborhood where most people live off the land, gathering their coconuts, lemongrass, kaffir lime leaves and fish from the orchards and canals on their land, or even on government lands that they keep manicured and rich with fruiting trees in exchange for a few ingredients. The villagers here actually organize their land into irrigation canals with planted mounds of coconut, mango, banana and other trees. Some canals are overgrown with duckweed. The sign above says "no fishing."

Above, a lily in our little pond. It blooms in the evening and closes around the time of the late-morning sun.

I love this deep bluish-green bamboo grove. Our fledgling bamboo (which we transplanted from our last home) is a rich gold, with streaks of green.

We call this the green path because no one sweeps it regularly, so it is always overgreen with moss and covered over with a soft layer of bamboo.

The monitor lizard gets a bad rap because its Thai name, "hia" in Thai, is one of the greatest insults that can be hurled at someone, along the lines of f***er. So the polite name is "thua ngeun thua thong," which means the "silver and gold one," or voranus, which is its scientific name.

It lives on land and in the water. The old auntie who lives by herself next door calls it "ai kay," which can be translated to "that gator." It has apparently nabbed several of her cats.

We see about one monitor lizard a day. It's a shy animal, always dodging into the forest as we approach. It's quite cute when it's taking a leisurely swim (like above), tucking it's arms neatly at its side and gently swaying side to side, like I might do if I were pretending to be an underwater torpedo. When it is scared, it goes pretty deep underwater, and you can only follow it by following it's trail of air bubbles on the surface of the canal. 

Visitor

A visitor >>>>

from  the phasmatodea family ( if you know the specific name let us know)

With a baby on its back 

Bathroom

After months of mulling how to put up our sink, we found a nice cabinet with mirror at Wat Suan Kaew (an antiques market temple that supports homeless people) and then punched a hole into to fit the sink. The plumbing took Landry a good day of tinkering around with pipes.

Our toilet is half finished. The brick throne, with the wooden cap that Landry built, with a nice heavy toilet lid... which was surprisingly not easy to find in Thailand. Many affordable toilet seats here are light, cheap plastic. So we are now awaiting a stainless steel pipe that will connect from the throne to the 200-liter composting bin below. The idea is to use a bin for a few months, then switch out for an empty bin one, allowing the contents of the filled one to compost.

Moving forward

Oh ho, Dave's picture again, with a little marker over our little cabana.

The counter on wheels goes where we want and need. The schoolhouse doors that we bought at a reclaimed wood warehouse got a fresh paint of turquoise, mixed with a touch of black to give it less bop, more gravity... or gravité, if you want to be really grave.

We bought a bunch of mason jars to keep sugar, flour, granola, rice, lentils. We have to dump the toaster -- the timer is broken, and it is an ugly, one-use only appliance. Frying pan does the job and is cleaner.

A big green plant in the back corner of our house one day sprouted these pretty precious things! Alas, they toppled during one of the big rains. We look forward to seeing them again one day.

Rain, rain, go away: Monsoons end Nov. 1.

Dinner table

We needed a pretty dinner table and still had leftover wood, so this was another Landry carpentry project.

Chisel & jigsaw.

Uncle Preecha, our neighbor, helped build our house and is master of the jungle. Any questions about plants, reptiles and such, we ask Preecha. He helped Landry with the table.

Voil
à la table. The five pieces that make the tabletop were once one long piece of wood. Landry loves his circular saw.

This picture doesn't capture how the I-shaped beams at the bottom fit snugly into the chisel-cut legs. It's my favorite part of the table.

Granite kitchen counter on caster wheels

Our good friends gave us a slab of granite or some such stone that was left over from their kitchen renovation. We often sat and stared at the stone slab over the past year and wondered how we would put it up. We decided to use the leftover wood from homebuilding for our remaining projects.

K. Ting is one of the guys who helped build our house, and he just told us recently that his specialty is woodwork -- he builds traditional Thai long-tail boats. Landry had built counter 1.0 himself, but then decided to enlist Ting's help for version 1.1. Landry can now chisel. 

Counter 1.0 was painted white, but we decided to go back to the natural wood color with an oil stain to even out the various wood tones. Washing off the white paint was a dumb, unnecessary job, but at least we gave the white a try.

Landry did most of the work, but I was remiss in taking pictures.

Counter with the shelves for pots and pans on the bottom, and a drawer with smooth-as-silk ball bearing rails for the silverware, serviettes, etc.

Kitchen sink

We recently got a Black & Decker laser level, and were happy to find that we somehow managed to get the shelves up straight, even though a water bubble level doesn't help give an exact indication of what's straight.

The sink was also a pain to get straight, but we cut the pipes needed and it's good. We got a water filter for drinking water, and we put the wooden frame up to give the taps a home.

Above the taps, next to the drying rack, are two "pintos" -- which is how Thais call bento boxes. They are traditional Thai lunch boxes, one layer filled with rice, and the others with meats or veggies to eat with.

We are back

After three months abroad for work and play across five countries, we are back in Phra Pradaeng, the lush green in the center of the above photo (our friend Dave took this while landing at BKK airport).

Cats on our neighbors' urns that collect rainwater for drinking. The cats hunt everything around, including the snakes. One of the cats got bitten by a snake, and his face swelled up like a mooncake.

The coconuts in the backyard are low -- I can walk up to the tree and just chop one for a sip of the sweet nectar. Great root network to prevent erosion, but the mango tree, alas, does not have the roots for the banks of a canal and fell in after a week of heavy rain. More mangroves to come.

Kaffir lime next to our front door.

Coconuts in the front yard -- this is the view from our glass front door, and the first thing we see when we sit up in bed.