Well, 2005 was the season to break all assumptions. On August 13th, 2005, and again on September 28th, 2005, there were two massive floods which caused more damage than has been seen in many decades. I returned to Pai from a two-month trip on October 11th, 2005 and wrote this report as I marveled at the power of nature. Luckily, my house and possessions were spared, but many locals lost their home or their entire business.
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Other downtown businesses also got their share of water flowing in or by. Fortunately, most of Pai either had no effect or had a few weeks of mud-shoveling to do. Unfortunately, the heavily affected areas with structure damage include around half of the guesthouses in Pai (both budget and high-end) because those are the areas with a nice river view.
Reports on the number of fatalities in the Pai valley vary greatly from the official figure of 2 (and 15 in all of Mae Hong Son province) to much higher unofficial estimates. No foreigners are reported to have died in the Pai valley floods.
For example, the flood transformed this sloping riverside guesthouse (near number 1 on the map above):
into this nearly flat plane of mud:
along with all of its neighbors.
To get a sense of the mud, here is the very high structure from which I took the picture above, before the flood:
and after:
Notice how the mud has risen up the foundation poles. During the flood, the water went far past this point, all the way up to the street, inundating businesses on the yellow part of the map above.
The flank of the Pai river around number 29 and 35 on the map above used to look like this:
but now it looks like this:
Interesting note: the owners of Rimtaling guesthouse, upper right, moved their entire guesthouse and renamed it the Paddy Field guesthouse on higher ground above town, about one month before the floods. But all other structures you see in this set of photos were toppled or removed by nature. The Rimtaling owners will be applying for the position of town psychics.
Mink, the owner of Yawning Fields pictured in my general page about Pai, is likely to build a smaller guesthouse up near Paddy Field this season, as her structures were also almost completely wiped out.
Family Hut and River View (across from 25 on the map above):
aren't what they used to be:
And the same could be said for nearby Good View:
And the pricey Pai River Corner, despite its expensive concrete anti-flooding ramparts, was literally sliced to half its previous size when the river changed course right through it, taking away all the riverside teak buildings and their foundations:
One of the most visible signs of the destruction is Lucky Bar, whose luck ran out when its foundation collapsed on August 13th:
In the pictures above you can clearly see how the river carried not only mud, but an unending supply of random debris, from broken bottles, food items, toiletries and hardware products on display at shops inundated along the path, to whole trees, boulders, appliances, and in some cases cars.
This is what made the post-flood situation so dangerous. If your foot and/or leg dropped into deep mud, you could never be sure what it would scrape on the way down. Bringing this point home, the whole area of Pai around the Mae Gawn stream mud debris took on that unmistakeable rotting smell of a trash dump.
After the August 13th flood (and even still in a few places as of October 11th), the mud was incredibly deep. It was hard to tell if you could step in any given place or if you would sink in all the way to your waist:
Some folks had mini-tractors, and the city offered disorganized but well-meaning bulldozer service, to try and win the town back from the everpresent mud:
In stark contrast to the almost simultaneous New Orleans reports of Hurricane Katrina, there was no killing or major looting, and the local Thais, though of course shocked by the events, tried to take them with humor and generally tried not to get too freaked out. Keeping their priorities in mind, the Thais made sure that even massively damaged structures like this one continued to proudly display images of the King (foreground and also upper right) and an altar for offering to the spirits (far distance):
This stream runs down the mountains along the North-Western wall of the Pai valley past the Kuo Min Dong (Jiin Haw) Chinese village and the Lisu village of Nam Huu, winds around past the road leading to Pai Hospital, passes through the Wednesday Market area of downtown Pai, makes a stop at the Lucky Bar, and finally empties into the Pai river.
For some unknown reason (the government has vehemently denied any connection to illegal deforestation, thus making this a distincly possible reason), this tiny stream became an unbelievable torrent which created the most dramatic scenes of destruction. The river at this point used to be a few meters wide and there were no boulders at all:
The unstoppable force of the river carved a great gash through this part of the valley, carrying boulders larger than cars and littering the area with dead trees.
Here is a movie of the unbelievable torrent in progress (note: the cheesy video overlays are not mine):
Minor Note: we're not sure, but one short scene in the middle of this movie, where the river is pushing a giant tree and two trucks across the road, could be either Nam Huu or it could be the pump station outside downtown Pai near what is now Yoma hotel (used to be a gas station). The rest of the movie is certainly the Nam Huu area, however.
The road to the chinese village was cut off after both floods. After the second flood, it did not open up for cars until early October, when they built this temporary bridge:
Above you can see the temporary wood and steel bridge erected over the gash. The Wednesday Market area itself got very wet and muddy but is otherwise undamaged. They have temporarily moved the whole Wednesday Market across town.
Here is a movie of the street during the August 13 flood. You will see objects float by from left to right in what seems to be a shallow stream, but what is actually a new, 3-meter-deep river cut right through the street. This is the gash over which they built the bridge pictured above. Amongst other things, you will see the river pushing by tons of furniture, a 1,000,000 baht computerised paint mixing machine from the hardware store, a pickup truck, and finally a giant cargo van which later smashed into and destroyed the Seng Tong market:
The Seng Tong day market:
was fatally damaged when the torrent pushed a giant flat-bed delivery truck right into the building:
Now, in early October 2005, all that is left of Seng Tong are the foundation poles:
During the flood in the Seng Tong area, some people were stranded on a nearby roof and had to be rescued by a set of clever everyday citizens who set up a rope system:
The Thai equivalent of the "fire department" or "national guard" were nowhere to be seen until days later. For some reason the police station was particularly badly hit.
The whole scene was caught on video by at least two different videographers, who then sold glitzy edited versions of the whole catastrophe on VCD in Pai and in Chiang Mai. Some of the VCDs had special effects and ecological musical soundtrack (including a custom-made song from a well-known folk singer about messing with the forest in Pai) and cost between 100-200B (USD $2.50-$5.00). The Thais do not apparently see anything wrong with this economic activity and are interested in seeing more of the catastrophe they just experienced.
Even in the wreckage of this nearby building, completely destroyed by the torrent, we can see surviving homages to the twin gods of Thailand—the spirits, and TV:
Here are some scenes from places outside of town that happened to be near the flooding rivers.
The expensive Baan Grating resort (one of whose other franchises is in Tsunami-destroyed Khao Lak, ouch) sustained heavy damage and the whole area around it has become a mud and sand bar:
The newly built Bulunburi resort, designed by an expensive Bangkok architect with an incredibly tall concrete walkway and high concrete foundation posts to withstand floods, actually made it past the August 13th flood. But in the high waters of the September 28th flood, the walkway broke away and the rooms collapsed. In another demonstration of how you cannot mess with nature, Bulunburi's rooms are now on the opposite side of the river from the main structure—the river simply changed course right through the middle of the resort:
Sipsongpanna resort is also heavily damaged, but the owners confidently say they'll have the restaurant and maybe even some accomodation operational by late November:
Today is interesting because last night, it rained for more than 12 hours—the first major downpour of the rainy season. Very few people got sleep last night, wondering which major structures of theirs were making a river journey to Burma. When the sun finally came up, we woke to this scene underneath the Pai bridge:
as compared with the "normal" flow (taken on July 21st, 2006):
Here is a July 6th shot from Pai River Hill Guesthouse high above the town, where the river is supposed to only occupy the left half of the frame:
and here is what it looks like on July 21st, 2006, when the water was sort of back to normal levels:
For the last 2-3 months, all along the river in both directions, people had paid lots of money for weeks of work in which 6-7 giant bulldozers scooped mud out of the river and deposited and patted down two 4m-wide, dirt-road-like river banks. The Pai River laughed at that and erased their work in a matter of hours.
Not to be fazed by something as trivial as futility, as of July 21st, they're at it again (you can see one bulldozer in the image above, cutting a curved U-shaped canal through the formerly flooded field in an attempt to carry the water...where?).
In another futile gesture that's more ritual than tactical, they've also started to pile sandbags along the river, though only in certain places and only about 1m high. The water will easily top this level in even a trivial flood. One cool thing is how they link the bags together by stabbing them with bamboo poles!
Although this particular flood was not even close to the level of the 2005 floods described in the rest of this document (for example, water did not actually go up into town), it has everyone thinking: "here we go again?"
Support This Site | I created this site and made it available free to all readers. If you have found it helpful or amusing, please support the effort, and future updates, in one of these ways: |
Use your credit card or PayPal to donate in support of the site. | |
Use this link to Amazon—you pay the same, I get 4%. | |
Learn Thai with my Talking Thai-English-Thai Dictionary app: iOS, Android, Windows. | |
Experience Thailand richly with my Talking Thai-English-Thai Phrasebook app. | |
Visit China easily with my Talking Chinese-English-Chinese Phrasebook app. | |
I co-authored this bilingual cultural guide to Thai-Western romantic relationships. | |
See Also | You'll probably also like these sites... |
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Buzzword bingo, bill the borg, MEZ, lurker's guide to video, and Thai, oh my! | |
Party? Meeting? Request a map, label it yourself, and easily fling it to your friends! | |
Travel with my friend Nang, who is a great nature, birding, and cultural guide. | |
My English-fluent Thai friend Jeed is a freelance illustrator who is available for hire. | |
See, sponsor and purchase the amazing paintings of Sa-ard Nilkong. | |
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