Pattaya floods … again

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Beach Road was more fit for jet skis than cars, as once again, heavy rains Oct. 19-20 were too much for Pattaya’s feeble drainage system.

You know the flooding is bad when kids can ride a banana boat raft down Beach Road.

It was just one of the many water-logged sites Oct. 19-20 as heavy rain drenched the area, creating meters-deep flooding in all the usual places where Pattaya’s feeble storm-drainage system failed again: Beach Road, Third Road, Soi Buakaow and on Sukhumvit Road near the highway police, Tesco-Lotus and Boontaworn.

Beach Road was more fit for jet skis than cars, as once again, heavy rains Oct. 19-20 were too much for Pattaya’s feeble drainage system.Beach Road was more fit for jet skis than cars, as once again, heavy rains Oct. 19-20 were too much for Pattaya’s feeble drainage system.

Rain came down heavily for two hours Sunday. And while some areas were able to return to near-normal quickly, the lower-elevation streets were impassable for hours.

Online social media was flooded as well, with pictures of stalled motorbikes, minivans with water above their doorjams and of three adventuresome kids riding a red-and-yellow banana-boat raft on Beach Road near Soi 6.

The heavy rain, of course, came less than a week after the Thailand Meteorological Department declared the rainy season over and the dry winter begun.

Residents in the Boontaworn area on Sukhumvit struggle to get their cars and motorbikes out of the floods.Residents in the Boontaworn area on Sukhumvit struggle to get their cars and motorbikes out of the floods.

It was travel at your own risk as driving through Pattaya was more like forging a jungle river when the flooded roads became nearly impassable.It was travel at your own risk as driving through Pattaya was more like forging a jungle river when the flooded roads became nearly impassable.