fon tok

it's raining ('fon tok') in bangkok... again. i'm not sure what it is about the geography here, but we get many days when the weather in the morning is beautiful. by mid-afternoon one can see huge storm clouds on the horizon and the rain begins to roll in.

my office windows face the west and often the rain looks like a wall of solid grey approaching. once it hits, it really hits- a monsoon of rain, bucketing down.

usually it'll rain very heavily for about an hour or so and then stop. but sometimes the rain continues to pour down for hours, meaning that i can look forward to my soi (street) being completely flooded. the choice is riding a taxi back (if the water doesn't reach the door sills), waiting in a restaurant or bar for the water to recede, or hiking up one's pant legs and wading home.

seems like the flooding hasn't been so bad in recent years, except when the level of the Chao Phraya river is already high and there's nowhere for the rain water to drain into.

chiang mai also has some flooding issues. last year i was driving to doi suthep and had to go through what looked like a river to reach it- see the photos below.

To see what the sky in Bangkok looks like right now, check out this webcam set up by the folks at 2bangkok.com.