Chronicle of a flood foretold | Bangkok Post: Arts & Culture

According to the official reports, the level of sea water was going to be at its highest on October 14th. From the beginning of the month the atmosphere in the city was tense and the talk was of nothing else. Despite the continuing reassurances from the authorities, which seemed increasingly irrelevant, many of the inhabitants living on the banks of the main river and along the canals were already piling up sandbags and unblocking whatever drainage system they had. In the stores and markets people were noticeably buying more tin food and other essentials than they could store. Bottled drinking water was already running out. The airport and the bus stations were crowded with those who had decided to leave; the rich to Europe or Australia for a family holiday and the poor to their villages. But most of the inhabitants of Bangkok had no choice but to wait for what now looked like an inevitable disaster. Much of Ayutthaya was already under a metre and there was no sign that the tactic to deviate the flow would work that year.

PHOTO: SOMKID CHAIJITVANIT

This is an excerpt from Tew Bunnag's novel The Naga's Journey, published in 2007. With startling detail and prescience, the narrative goes on to describe the flood as it moves into the city, government impotence to avert it and the tactics of residents to survive it in scenes that could have been first-person accounts of how the drama has unfolded in Bangkok over the past two months.