Flood Prevention

As I'm writing this there is an enormous downpour going on.  It has been a typical monsoon type of day in fact.  A bit of sun, a bit of grey, a bit of rain.

We went out for lunch and I took a few photos to show you how Sukhumvit is preparing itself for the flood (should it come).

These looked funny as we couldn't work out why they wanted a channel of water running down between the sandbags and into the doorway!  In all fairness the doorway may have been like that for customers.

 All along our end of Sukhumvit and up to Asoke, I noticed that these tiny flood walls were going up.  A concrete post at either end holds a metal bracket into which a plank of wood can be inserted.  A closer look at some shopfronts showed me that some shops already had these groves for inserting the plank, built into their shop fronts.  I just had never noticed them before.  Some people were going as far as to build breeze block walls, that you now will have to climb over to get inside the restaurant.

 Do you think the phone was to call for help and the camera to take photos of the event?!

 All the banks have mounds of sandbags.  The best one I saw (but couldn't get a photo of - the guard didn't look too happy) was one where they had actually numbered the sandbags.  Now, does bag two sit atop or next to bag one?  I bet that kept someone busy.

 They were taking no chances with this basement.  Already four steps above pavement level, they are double sandbagged both upstairs and down, and also around the side of the building.

Alan says that north of BKK there are up to 1,000 tethered boats, all of whom have their motors running in a bid to push the flood water out to sea.  Is that desperate or what?

 Meanwhile, back at Emporium, that Pandora thing is still going on.  Like last weekend, they have the birds of prey club in to show of their birds.  It was so busy I could just about get this shot.

They flew the bird from the ground up to the man's gauntleted arm.  Even in that short space, you could only but marvel at the beauty of this bird.  I talked a bit with the handlers last week. A young girl told me they have a small farm just outside of BKK, where they go to train their birds.
On a real digression here but... did I ever tell you about the year in Abidjan when there was a shortage of turkeys at Christmas, so they started bringing in vultures from Ghana?  Apparently they tasted similar!