It’s hard to compete with the clever compositions coming from the Mystery Train (McKenney’s winter Casita travels only available by interstellar subscription), however we’re becoming closer to the anchorage analogy than we’d first realized.
Rainy season (typically ending in early December) has persisted, despite reputable politicians’ insistence against any global phenomenon causation, well into January. Southern Thailand’s water and river catchment area is the mountain range about 200 kilometers north and east of Trang, and what’s not evident currently is that the Trang River was large enough to allow steam ships up to the city limits 100 years ago. Erosion, natural delta sediment settling, and development has narrowed the river’s banks to a third of it’s historic capacity and forced the port downriver 20 km. Therefore when rains linger in the hill country the towns, settlements, roads, houses and people downstream flood. Not to mention, all this countryside was rice paddies or jungle before modern times.
Back to the anchorage metaphor; when I washed clothes last night on the back porch, it was similar to dumping wash water over the side of Paradox. That’s about a six foot exaggeration, but the feeling and sound was the same. Water hitting water, soggy wet lawn to be exact.
This morning we’ve walked around the anchorage, checking on other potential floaters and see that the original tenant housing of this Guesthouse, currently used as lower-cost student housing — think temporary illegal immigrant farmworker housing — have about 3 inches of water on their floors. Manager/owners have picked up floor level clothing, and other student detritus, placing it on the beds, since the students are still on holiday break and not in residence.
Of course it might be more proper to say we’re living at Lake Wassana or Wassana Peninsula since all sides of this Guesthouse complex are covered with water. Good time for a drone photo, but Santa was prudent or waiting until they make a really ultralight version. A raft or small boat would be great for exploring the neighboring palm oil groves and rice fields.
We are still 8 vertical inches from having our feet wet while typing. Our cycling polymath tells us that it takes a day and a half for the waters to reach Trang from Nakhon Si Thammarat, so even though the sun finally made an appearance here in the flatlands the waters can still rise. And the nursery owner one kilometer from here, also a cyclist, tells us that we’re lucky because the west-side of the river bank burst first, so most of the initial waters flooded that direction. We’re only getting 50% of water that’s possible. And speaking of history, the day after we left Wassana 6 years ago the water came 18″ into our freshly vacated room. They had to move all the furniture upto on the highway access road.
We are more optimistic and experienced boaters, not to mention good at treading water for 26 hours. This is not to say Stanna doesn’t have a plan to abandon ship to the larger recently built (one meter higher) cruise ship across the driveway. Not much change in the water’s edge “marker” stick I placed before starting this blog. However water continues creeping up and we may still have to pull anchor.
