Bangkok Bracing for Floods

 

I was avoiding my hundreds of pages of reading and procrastinating on Facebook one night, when I suddenly received a new post from one of my classmates in our Chula student group.  I figured this would be another great way to procrastinate a little longer and decided to click on her attached news article.  The headline read: "BANGKOK BRACES FOR WORST FLOODS IN OVER 50 YEARS.”

Wait, WHAT?!  As I frantically scrolled to find the date and time the article was written, my mouth dropped when I saw today’s date and time written in the corner.  Published by the Bangkok Post, a reliable English newspaper here in Thailand, I knew this was no joke.  I began frantically researching more websites and news articles to see what this was all about…

I decided not to over-panic and went to class tomorrow, thinking this was another Hurricane Irene situation which to this day I swear was Mother Nature’s way of ruining my last weekend in New York.  New Yorkers panicked, overreacted, and we watched TROPICAL STORM Irene come and go without much damage.  I thought this was nothing more than an over dramatization of the media.

I explained my flawless theory of media frenzy to one of my Thai friends in class.  She said, “Unlike your country, here, we tend to downplay situations, because Thai people are very superstitious and panic easily.”  Oh.  Shit.  Right, ok.  So I guess I should go shopping after class and buy some food and water just to be safe?  

This is what happened when I went that afternoon, directly after class, to the store.  These aren’t tiny mini-marts, these are Wal-Mart-sized mega stores.  I went to four different ones in three different areas before I called a few classmates who also said they could not locate food or water.  Then, I started to panic.  I began to look for smaller stores…and despite my efforts; 7-Eleven after 7-Eleven, there was no food to be found.

This is where bread is supposed to be...  :(

I watched the news again tonight…and it says we should have MINUMIM seven days of water and non-perishable food stocked.  They anticipate the power will go out quickly with the floods and it could take weeks before Bangkok is back to normal.

I don’t have enough food or water for that long…and I have been just about everywhere I can think of searching for food.  

I have never really been in this situation before…