It's a flooded market but Thais keep trading

Even small boats suddenly become water taxis in the submerged streets of Bangkok.

Flooded out but still want to make a fashion statement? Try these lime green rubber boots. Feeling stir crazy with the fetid waters surrounding your home? How about special snorkels to keep your car running in high water or a jet ski to navigate submerged streets?

In Bangkok, the ongoing flood disaster has provided plenty of opportunity for business ingenuity to flourish.

Months of floods in Thailand have paralyses car factories and disrupted other big businesses and are estimated to have caused billions of dollars of damage to industry.

But the slow-moving flood-waters have been a boon for quick-witted small traders looking to cater to some of the startling demands of water-weary Thais.

At one of the flood markets that have sprung up in Bangkok, dozens of makeshift shops line the sides of a road just a few hundred meters from encroaching flood-waters ready to arm those coping with a disaster that has killed 500 since July.

Operating out of the back of trucks and on the pavements, the traders sell plastic boats, jet skis, waders, water pumps, nonperishable food, propellers and plastic tarp marketed as "refrigerator wraps".

In other parts of the city, builders are erecting cinder block walls trying to protect shops and houses.

There's even a new car-towing service that uses Styrofoam to float stranded vehicles to safety.

The capital's mechanics have been busy with special modifications that allow cars, trucks and motorcycles to navigate swamped streets.

Thong Dechapak said his family's car repair shop had been refitting up to eight vehicles a day with an engine snorkel and exhaust pipe modification that together cost 10,000 baht ($422) - a month's salary for many in Thailand.

The device for the engine sticks up above the car's roof like a diving snorkel, sucking in air so fuel for the engine continues to combust while driving through flood water.

"Right now there's a lot of demand. There are no spare parts left. We started getting client orders about two months ago," when provinces north of Bangkok began to get flooded, said Dechapak, 24.

"They keep coming. There are more and more every day," he said.

They've also fitted exhaust snorkels to motorcycles for friends. The price: a case of beer.

Videos of modified Thai motorcycles chugging through dirty water are already causing a splash on YouTube. In one, the water is high enough to submerge the seat.

Many of the entrepreneurs have been flooded out of their shops or homes, but necessity and demand means they're not giving up their livelihoods.

Wiweena Boonsanong, 27, hawks colorful rubber boots in different patterns from plain black to lime green and purple army-print. Out of the 25 rubber boot shops dotted along a section of Ramintra Rd in Bangkok's northern suburbs, she's the only one selling boots with different patterns.

Boonsanong used to sell women's shoes at a market near the now swollen Chao Phraya River that winds through the city of nine million. That shop was flooded and with her house invaded by water, she realized that she didn't like wearing just the garden-variety black and brown ones.

"Women will always like to be in fashion even if it's flooded. We want to look cute," said Boonsanong, who had sold six pairs at 350 baht a pop within an hour of setting up shop.

Nearby, Wichra Lertrasamee's rather more high-end business - selling a motor adapted to function as both a water pump and a boat propeller - is bustling.

It sells for 9500 baht and Lertrasamee is moving 15 to 16 a day. Lertrasamee said he had one customer who used the motor to propel a bamboo raft.

Using another attachment turns the motor into a pump that can help clear water from a flooded house.