For all your flood needs

Stock up for the duration at an outdoor market on Ekamai-Ram Intra Road

With the flood crisis emptying many store shelves, a lot of people are finding what they need at an open-air market just off Ekamai-Ram Intra Road at Pradit Manutham Road. 

If you can still get there, it has hundreds of vendors selling essential goods for surviving.

The narrow soi next to the Lotus supermarket is full of pickup trucks bearing bottled water of various brands, ranging in price from Bt85 to Bt100 per pack. 

Keep strolling from there - you'll see boots of different designs and materials selling for Bt190 to Bt450.

The "trendy" apparel here usually means it's waterproof and it comes in all sorts of colours. There are trousers for Bt480 and lifejackets for Bt350. For Bt180 you can buy a tin of Wonder Powder, great for quickly healing wounds and chasing off prickly heat, ringworm and bedsores.

Look for the staff called Switching New, which sells solar cells and battery chargers for mobile phones, LED lights and other electrical appliances, with prices running from Bt560 to Bt1,200.

You might want to trade in your car for a paddleboat. They cost Bt2,000 to Bt6,500. Beach mattresses, also selling for Bt2,000, might come in handy too.

The expansive Crystal Park affords space for a car-boot sale with around 40 vendors. One car-accessories manufacturer has expanded into paddleboats made of plastic ABS that cost Bt6,500. 

The Great 3381 company offers colourful life jackets bearing messages like "A flood souvenir from Bangkok".

Protect your clothes with smart PVC Chest waders imported from China for Bt2,200 and waterproof trousers for Bt400.

And then there are drainage pumps, also from China as well as Japan, ranging in price from Bt5,500 to Bt35,000.

You can get a five-litre bag of white rice for Bt180 to Bt220, dried seafood for Bt100, LED lights for Bt320 to Bt450, mobile toilets for Bt200 and water buckets for Bt100, plus T-shirts with prints and sunglasses.

Finally, down at the end of the road, there are vendors selling fibreglass boats for Bt6,500, along with that EM micro-organism liquid, mosquito netting, more boots, more waterproof clothing and more pumps.