Froc mulls disbanding as emergency phase ends Relief drive shifts to rehabilitation efforts

The Flood Relief Operations Command will next week consider when it should disband now that the general flood situation in most provinces has improved, Justice Minister and Froc director Pracha Promnok says.

He said the Froc will assess its flood response role next week and consider when the command can be dissolved as it now appears its primary task of emergency response is no longer necessary.

From now on, the next stage would be one of flood recovery, with a committee appointed to oversee rehabilitation and compensation measures, Pol Gen Pracha said.

He said he will meet Bangkok Governor Sukhumbhand Paribatra today along with the governors of seven provinces that remain flooded in parts to find ways to help flood victims and to speed up drainage of their communities.

Pol Gen Pracha expects Vibhavadi Rangsit Road will reopen for traffic in the next few days as almost the entire length of the road surface has dried out.

He said efforts are being made to dismantle the big bag flood barrier in tambon Lak Hok of Pathum Thani's Muang district. More heavy machinery will be brought in to help with the work.

The remaining stretch of the big bag wall at Sai Mai district and the right-hand side of tambon Lak Hok should be pulled down soon afterwards, Pol Col Pracha said.

"The general situation has now improved, although the drainage of fetid, stagnant floodwater in areas that have been flooded for a long time is a concern," he said.

MR Sukhumbhand yesterday said the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration had sent a letter to the Froc, asking for a meeting to discuss plans to raise or lower the sluice gates along Khlong Maha Sawat in an effort to ease the hardship of the flood-affected people living in the area.

The move is in compliance with an order issued by the Administrative Court.

The governor also said City Hall has raised three sluice gates higher in eastern Bangkok to help drain floodwater in Pathum Thani.

MR Sukhumbhand said authorities have raised the sluice gate at Phraya Suren canal from 1.4 metres to 1.5m, the gate at Saen Saep canal in Min Buri district from 1.3m to 1.5m and the gate at Bung Kwang canal from 1.2m to 1.3m.

Water levels in various affected canals had dropped steadily, he said.

The BMA yesterday increased its collections of waste deposited by the flooding, up from the average 8,500 tonnes a day to 12,000 tonnes.

Bangkok and provincial officials together with volunteers will start collecting waste in nine flood-affected districts this weekend, before His Majesty the King's 84th birthday on Monday, he added.

The Froc yesterday said the eastern areas of Bangkok would be back to normal early next week.

The floodwater in several areas of the east had already receded, except in a few low-lying areas.

The Froc would provide additional water pumps to these areas to rapidly drain out the water.

It is expected that the areas would be dry by this Monday, the Froc added.

Veera Wongsaengnak, chairman of the Froc's Water Draining Committee which is responsible for drying out the western part of the capital, said the draining of about 2 billion cubic metres of remaining northern runoff from the western areas would take about 20 days.

Of the total, 600 million cu/m would be managed for farm usage in nearby areas and the remaining 1.4 billion cu/m would be drained out at a rate 70 million cu/m a day.

The northern floods will be channelled out to the sea through the Tha Chin River and take 20 days to complete, Mr Veera, former deputy chief of the Royal Irrigation Department, said.

Thailand Flooding 2011: BKK Must Eats: Feasts at Jae On

Thailand Flooding 2011: BKK Must Eats: Feasts at Jae On: So where are you going first?” I’d just booked my ticket for a quick 10-day reacquaintance with my dear old friend Bangkok later this mont...

BKK Must Eats: Feasts at Jae On

So where are you going first?”

I’d just booked my ticket for a quick 10-day reacquaintance with my dear old friend Bangkok later this month (yay!), and my wife, who I’ll meet there a few days after my arrival, wanted to know which of our favorite restaurants I’ll head to first. Good question that I thought would be tough to answer but then again, it’s really not: Jae On.

When I think about authentic Thai food, I think about Jae On. When I think about quintessential outdoor dining experiences in Bangkok, I think Jae On. 

If you’ve ever been to Bangkok, you know the type of place: bare bones decor, white concrete walls, folding aluminum tables spilling out onto the sidewalk, multi-colored plastic chairs held together in spots by duct tape,

traffic fumes mingling with aromatic odors from bubbling hot pots, oscillating ceiling fans directing sticky humidity back and forth, and a legion of servers somewhere between 15 – 20 years old. 

Table side trays with buckets of ice, sweating bottles of Chang, and half-empty bottles of 100 Pipers whiskey. Maybe an old TV mounted on the ceiling tuned to a Thai soap opera.

I’ve lived on Petchaburi Road, just down the street from Jae On, on two separate occasions. Before moving to Bangkok, we always ended up at hotels near the Ratchathewi BTS Skytrain station (Asia Hotel, Reno Hotel, Samran Place), which is just around the corner from Jae On. 

It’s one of the first “local” restaurants we ever tried, and it’s one where we’ve greatly expanded our Thai food palate over the years as we’ve delved deeper and deeper into a menu chock full of what you might call Thai Food’s Greatest Hits. 

There are hundreds of places like it in and around Bangkok, but this one, obviously, has a special place in my heart. It’s packed with locals almost every night, too, so I’m clearly not the only one with an obsession (though mine very well might run deeper than most).

To that end, I can’t tell you exactly what to eat: I hate to sound cliche, but this is a place where you can truly pick and choose just about anything that sounds appealing and be satisfied. 

We've taken many Thai friends and out-of-town guests here, and everybody has raved about it. The best plan of attack is to do it Thai style: order a bunch of different plates and share. 

(It’s one of my life’s missions, however, to introduce the concept of a serving spoon to Thais when it comes to communal dining: not into everybody digging into the food with their own spoon.)

One Man’s Feast

As a starting point, however, consider my go-to order of choice, which is pictured above. It’s a lot of food for one person and is probably enough for two, but, hey–once you get started it’s hard to stop, plus this lineup is all veggies so you can’t feel too guilty if you gorge.

Okay: to the far left, a spicy white mushroom salad, served with tomatoes, onions, fresh herbs, and various other spices. 

I love the texture contrasts between the crunchy onions and the soft, squishy mushrooms, and insist it’s prepared spicy, or how Thais would normally eat it, but be prepared: like C&C Music Factory, it’s gonna make you sweat.

In the middle, my vote for the tastiest som tam in Bangkok, which again is best served as Thais would eat it as far as heat goes. That sauce  my God that sauce. I could slurp it like soup.

To the far right, stir-fried morning glory, a simple Southeast Asian standard stir-fried with garlic, oyster sauce, and super-hot chilis that retains a nice burned wok flavor. 

Again, I’ve eaten morning glory at many places in Bangkok and elsewhere in Thailand, and swear this is still the best version I’ve ever tasted. 

Complement the feast with a small rattan basket filled with sticky rice and, of course, a tall bottle (or four) of Chang beer. Jae On’s grilled squid is another favorite.

You’ll find me here on the night of December 11–just look for the table with a spread that looks exactly like the one pictured here, and the tall, sweating guy with a huge smile on his face.

We could play the “Must-Eat Food in Bangkok” game every day for years and still have plenty of culinary fodder to feature. 

In that sense, the “BKK Must Eats” series will not be comprehensive, nor will it exclusively list dishes that are “the best” of anything (though it might, from time to time). 

The modest goal of this series is simply to spotlight, somewhat randomly, damned delicious dishes in Bangkok that I’ve indulged on many occasions, and that I recommend you indulge too.

Thailand Flooding 2011: PM: Most of flooded areas dry this month

Thailand Flooding 2011: PM: Most of flooded areas dry this month: Most of the flooded areas in Bangkok, Nonthaburi, and Pathum Thani are expected to turn dry this month except farmland in low-lying areas wh...

PM: Most of flooded areas dry this month

Most of the flooded areas in Bangkok, Nonthaburi, and Pathum Thani are expected to turn dry this month except farmland in low-lying areas which may take longer than 30 days to completely drain water out, Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra said in her regularly Saturday address to the people.

She said that in the areas east of Bangkok, main roads and commercial areas had returned to be usable.

However, floodwater which had inundated Lak Hok, Don Muang, Chaeng Wattana, and Lam Luk Ka areas must be completely pumped and drained out by the end of December.

Big bags forming flood barriers in many areas which were no longer necessary would be gradually removed with consent from the local people, she said.

Water in major canals west of Bangkok were nearly normal and no longer overflowing.

Therefore, main roads and commercial areas on the Thonburi side of the Chao Phraya river were expected to be usable in one to two weeks from now. 

However, it might take two to three weeks to completely drain water out from some flooded areas in Phutthamonthon Sai 4, Phutthamonthon Sai 5, and Om Noy.

Major canals in Pathum Thani and Nonthaburi were still overflowing. Water was expected to be drained into the Chao Phraya river more quickly next week when the tide is low, she said.

The Flood Relief Operations Command (Froc) had coordinated with some agencies including the Royal Irrigation Department to install more water pumps to drain water out of Bang Bua Thong and Bang Yai areas so that Pathum Thani and Nonthaburi could be dry before the New Year.

The prime minister is scheduled to visit flood hit people in Ubon Ratchathani province today, and Ayutthaya tomorrow.

Many shades of Thailand

Eight million carcasses just couldn't be wrong. Neither could the average daily rubbish collection of 7000 tonnes - most of it sitting, or floating, uncollected.

It was those two statistics from a news item on the BBC overseas service news which confirmed we'd made the right decision. Our family group of four were in Pattaya, 150 kilometres south east of Bangkok, when I saw it. 

Pattaya was a substitute for Bangkok, where we were originally going for five nights for the start of our family holiday in early November.

Our timing was impeccable. Despite booking six months earlier when Malaysian Airways was offering a cheap return airfare from Auckland to Bangkok, we could hardly have chosen a worse time.

The week before our holiday was to start, Bangkok and Thailand were featuring nightly on the news, with graphic footage of ever-increasing flood levels.

Should we still go there? That was solved when, with six sleeps to go, the New Zealand Government issued a travel warning. 

"Our advice is against all tourist and other non-essential travel to Bangkok. This does not apply to transit through Suvarnabhumi airport."

So that was that. Bangkok was out and Pattaya was in - even though it appeared the Thai Government was doing everything short of lining up thousands of peasants to form an absorbent human wall to keep the flood waters out of the CBD where the tourists go. 

Flooding other parts of the capital deliberately to keep that part dry just didn't wash with us, so to speak.

Later in the trip we met other tourists, notably Australians, who'd been to Bangkok with "no worries", but it wasn't something we were comfortable doing. 

Seeing the woman from the Thai relief agency on the news giving that unbelievable statistic - eight million dead animals, or carcasses, in the flood waters covering much of the country, gave us all the reassurance we needed that we'd made the right decision.

Our journey was in two parts. Five days in Pattaya, then six nights in Koh Samui, an island full of resorts.

Part A: Pattaya

It turned out this city of 100,000-plus was the original sin city of Thailand. Not a lot has changed really. It could be described as one giant girlie bar, where you could get drinks, girls, and a few variations of both.

Never was it a hard sell, though. In the interests of research for this travel story, our group, consisting of three Browns and a Scott (a mama and poppa bear, a daughter bear and her partner, the teddy bear) did the hard yards.

Unlike some Asian tourist spots, there isn't an evil undercurrent running through the city. Generally, it was all pretty laid back, in every sense of the word, although it took some of us a while to get over seeing fat, elderly European men (mainly German) walking hand-in-hand with tiny young Thai women. Or boys.

Mind you, it did mean the German culinary tastes were well catered for and most restaurants had German dishes on their menus. 

That was fine with me, even if it did evoke the odd righteous comment from my travelling companions, along the lines of, "Nothing like going to Thailand to have a schnitzel for dinner". 

They happily ate dishes such as pad thai, a traditional Thai dish comprising chilli, noodles (seafood, optional) chilli and even more chilli.

The shopping was great with absurdly cheap deals from the hundreds of roadside stalls that had bargains galore for the shopping-inclined. 

The Pattaya hotels are more of the three- and four-star variety, with the odd luxury resort, but prices are cheap, with decent hotels ranging from NZ$50 to NZ$80 a night per person, with breakfast often included.

And the acid test for any holiday destination: Would I go back? Probably not. It was good, but once is enough.

Part B: Koh Samui

Koh, in Thai, means island, so after the city-style delights of Pattaya, we spent six nights in the island of Samui off the east coast of Kra Isthmusis, Thailand's second largest island, at 228 square kilometres and more than 50,000 people. We stayed at the Samui Resotel resort in Chaweng, the island's main beach and shopping centre.

It was wonderfully low key and, more importantly to us by this stage of the trip, quiet. Great beach at our doorstep and some delightful locals who had a ready laugh and desire to help visitors.

Compared with Phuket, where the only motivation for doing anything is price gouging and ripping off tourists, Samui was sheer bliss. 

Prices, apart from the accommodation, were cheaper than Pattaya. We swam in the ocean which was like swimming in a pool - such was the warmth and the calm, or the hotel pool, complete with swim-up bar.

The food, for those chilli- inclined companions, was absurdly cheap and declared delicious. I enjoyed the Indian food, and there were plenty of Italian and German dishes to cater for more sensible tastes.

Daughter and teddy bear hired a motor bike, to push the number of those machines on the island past the one million mark, and easily did a tour of the island in a day, without incident and insurance.

Regulations and the attendant barriers to free trade that exist in the Western world are virtually unheard of in much of Thailand. 

You want a bike, a car, a taxi, a girl, a boy, a room, a meal, a drink, then whoever you are talking to will happily rent you pretty much all of those things. Your only regulatory requirement is to have the required amount of money.

To sum up, if you want a relaxing, get-away-from-it island holiday, Samui is the place to go to. Forget Phuket and some of the other more high-profile destinations, Samui beats them.

Just don't fly Malaysian Air. Choose an airline that has crew who believe in radical service philosophies such as serving drinks, edible food and catering for the passengers, rather than ensuring they can sleep for the maximum amount of time.

Perils of travel

• If there's one thing that puts people off travelling to the northern hemisphere it is the amount of time it takes to get there.

• Nothing worse than arriving exhausted and taking days to get over it, just before it's time to fly home again.

• Times are all New Zealand time.

• Well, I'm happy to share this tip with travellers, that may make it easier - don't fly on Malaysian Airlines

• Our happy little group of four all agreed on one thing - it would take a fair bit before we trusted them again. Let me explain.

• WEDS: 1pm, we drive from New Plymouth to Auckland, have dinner with family members then drive to airport.

• WEDS: 10pm, arrive Auckland airport for 12.25pm departure, only to see the words, "rescheduled, now leaving 3.10am".

• THURS: 4.10am, we leave for Kuala Lumpur.

• THURS: 3pm, arrive in Kuala Lumpur, fortunately in time for connecting flight to Bangkok on another Malaysian airline flight. What was to be a six-hour stop is now two and a half hours.

• THURS: 5pm, approaching the designated boarding gate a security woman asks us where we are going. We say to gate 23 to catch the flight to Bangkok. "It's cancelled, not enough passengers," she tells us.

• THURS: 8pm, we catch the next Malaysian Airlines flight to Bangkok.

• THURS: 10.30pm, we finally arrive at Bangkok, after circling for 30 minutes.

• THURS: 11pm, pre-paid shuttle arrives to drive us to Pattaya, 150km from Bangkok on an excellent highway. Everything goes smoothly for an hour, then, along with what seems like every other car ever sold in Thailand, the police stop the traffic. 

• Black limos are at the front, but the traffic is backed up for kilometres as we wait. Turns out it had something to do with the King, our driver tells us. After 35 minutes we're off again.

• FRI: 1.55am, we arrive at our hotel. The two rooms with queen- sized beds we booked aren't available, but they have two twin rooms. It figures.

Airport head defends staff Cars moved to make way for flood relief

The director of Don Mueang Airport yesterday defended his staff who moved cars from the second floor of the airport's parking garage to the ground level, only to see them flooded.

This is what happened to the cars that were moved.

Don Mueang Airport director Kanpat Mangkhalasiri was responding to complaints through the media that people's vehicles had been left in floodwater in the airport compound although they had originally been parked properly on the second floor of the car park building at Terminal 2 to avoid floodwater.

Capt Kanpat said between 30 and 50 vehicles had been towed away because they were blocking and preventing flood relief logistics efforts.

The vehicles were moved to the ground floor before floodwater started washing into the Don Mueang Airport compound.

"No one has complained directly to AoT [Airports of Thailand Plc]," he said. "Motorists parked their vehicles at Don Mueang Airport and more than 100 vehicles were flooded. They understand the situation and have accepted it."

Transport Minister Sukumpol Suwanatat said yesterday the AoT would investigate the complaint.

He did not say whether the AoT should be responsible for the flood-damaged vehicles.

A total of 166 vehicles were still on the ground floor at Don Mueang airport yesterday and they are in the process of being salvaged.

Deputy police chief Pongsapat Pongcharoen took a team of mechanics and insurance company staff to salvage the vehicles.

He said vehicles with first-class auto insurance would be towed and repaired for free and vehicles with less insurance coverage or without would be towed to garages for free.

The vehicles towed down from the car park building would get the same treatment, Pol Gen Pongsapat said.

Police will also wash the vehicles that were flooded in the airport for free, he said.

Panthep Chaiparinya from the General Insurance Association said most vehicles on the ground at the airport were inundated and repairing them would take more than a month.

Panumas Saksongmuang said he had left his car at the airport on Oct 20 in the belief that it would be safe from floods because the government's Flood Relief Operations Command was located there. Then he and his family went to Lamphun.

On Oct 30 he was shocked when the government ordered the car owners to move vehicles from the airport.

Mr Panumas said travel difficulties prevented him from retrieving his car from the airport. He said he would have to gradually buy used parts to repair his car because he could not afford an immediate full repair.

He asked the government to arrange for cheap parts and garages with reasonable prices for flood-affected motorists.

Drying out

Receding floodwater have cleared areas around the hangar at Don Mueang airport. Salvaging the airport is expected to be an arduous task involving large mobilization of manpower and budget.

The water levels in areas surrounding the old airport are slowly returning to normal.

The vehicles towed down from the car park building would get the same treatment, Pol Gen Pongsapat said.

Police will also wash the vehicles that were flooded in the airport for free, he said.

Panthep Chaiparinya from the General Insurance Association said most vehicles on the ground at the airport were inundated and repairing them would take more than a month.

Panumas Saksongmuang said he had left his car at the airport on Oct 20 in the belief that it would be safe from floods because the government's Flood Relief Operations Command was located there. Then he and his family went to Lamphun.

On Oct 30 he was shocked when the government ordered the car owners to move vehicles from the airport.

Mr Panumas said travel difficulties prevented him from retrieving his car from the airport. He said he would have to gradually buy used parts to repair his car because he could not afford an immediate full repair.

He asked the government to arrange for cheap parts and garages with reasonable prices for flood-affected motorists.