Bangkok: a sunny morning. People are swimming in the pool of the apartment complex. Guests at the hotel along the river are eating breakfast on the balconies. Longtail boats, those long and narrow traditional craft now used primarily by tourists, ply the river. A couple enjoys the breeze that wafts over the swimming pool in the evening. The restaurants along the river front are brightly lit. Enormous disco boats float along the river.
You are tempted to stay inside your penthouse apartment on the river and write, like a city-dwelling hermit; sometimes writing, sometimes taking a break to swim in the pool or just to gaze out over the city. The Chinese temple across the way looks odd: only the roof of the pagoda and part of the columns decorated with dragons are visible.
Bangkok is, for the most part, under water. Just like almost 15,000 kilometers of Thailand. The economic implications are disastrous. Not to mention the human and social impact. But it all depends on your vantage point: from up on high, they all seem quite removed and distant, as if they belong to another world.
If, on the other hand, you go down there and dare to leave your own small world behind for a moment, you are immediately struck by the fact that the earth has vanished. Many of the streets have become canals, the markets, houses and shops are flooded. The shelves of the small supermarkets are empty, the water taxis that connect the city are not running. The passengers would have nowhere to get off. All of this is, in fact, just a short distance away.
Now a creeping feeling begins to insinuate itself. Your world might very soon, in the next few hours or days, become a prison from which you will be forced to leave to look for food and water. The lights may go out. Suddenly, being up above it all means that you will discover what it is like to climb up thirty flights of stairs.
It seems like a script from a horror film. Nevertheless, the idea haunts you. You get an immediate sense of the fraility of a global system whose disasters can be traced directly to a sacrilegious mismanagement of nature.
Then you think of the even more fragile Asian system, which was perhaps too quickly hailed as the up and coming power of the new century that would see the decline of the West. Skyscrapers here, more often than not, reflect a pretense of power rather than true strength. It is a strange paradox that Bangkok is sinking under the weight of its skyscrapers
The human factor here is too often marginalized: social inequality and decay add to the problems. Then they are carried away with the water.
Finally, though only because it takes time to come to the unpleasant reality at hand, you realize just how weak you are yourself. Most of the Thai people that you meet in front of their flooded homes or businesses smile at you. "Mai pen rai" says someone, with an air of peaceful resignation.


Comparing the way you feel with the way they behave is a little disquieting. You see your flaws and weaknesses, your detachment from reality.
I haven't believed in coincidence for a long time. The Naga has reaffirmed my disbelief; this seven headed serpent which represents the spirit of water in Asian myths. It can be as benevolent as it can be vindicative and devastating. At the moment I am translating a book by the Thai author, Tew Bunnag, titled The Naga's Journey (the Italian edition to be published in 2012 by Metropoli d’Asia). The Naga, in the form of a disastrous flood which wreaks havoc on the fragility of Bangkok and its populace - "Fragile does not mean weak, it means that it breaks easily" says Bunnag - is the underlying character of the book.


In the meantime, another day has passed. A couple enjoy the breeze.The restaurants are enlighted. At least here, the chance and the chaos are still covered beneath the water, as is the Naga.

A video in Thai with English subtitles that explians, in the Thai fashion, what is happening and why. It is very good in its way.