Thai Floods

[farangbah]

(katoeylover @ Nov. 12 2011,09:28) For the first time in 8 years I am seriously considering NOT going at new years.

Although i am in a bit of Thailand overload, the feeling in Bangkok last week was unlike anytime before

Say it ain't so!

Come join me and Spare Wheel in Bucket for Xmas!

[Tomcat]

Are you still in BKK or in Pattaya FB. I hear so many stories its hard to make out what the fuck is going on down Soi4. The irrigation dept keep stating that inner bkk is now safe and by two weeks time life will be back to normal ( inner BKK)

Keep us informed ..

I may join you in PKT for a few days if BKK doesnt sort itself or maybe im going to the PI instead for a few days

[farangbah]

(TTChang @ Nov. 11 2011,00:16) But dont worry, Hilary Clinton is in town next week.

Cheap shot...

[farangbah]

(Tomcat @ Nov. 13 2011,00:09)
Are you still in BKK or in Pattaya FB.

I may join you in PKT for a few days if BKK doesnt sort itself or maybe im going to the PI instead for a few days

Samui.

Be good to have you down there, TC. I like it there then. Jim's birfday is Boxing Day, so it's a nice stretch...

[Tomcat]

Do you book in advance or just jump on the plane when you feel like going. just wondering about this

Phuket may be busy this Xmas due to the situation in BKK so im not sure about Hotels or flight availability... decisons decisions. Do they have a dozen flights  day or just a few.

[farangbah]

 Samui: just went, it's a ghost town around here, shocking. Phuket, during the holidays, I book.  Lots of flights, shouldn't be a problem if you book soon.  Find a hotel on Soi Paradise, your kinda area...  

Hope you can make it!  

[moe666]

Boys come to Chiang mai high and dry here. Walking down the street a crazy van came by with 3 ladyboys advertiseing a cabaret show.

My friend in Minburi is ok his house is high and dry but the road outside the moobaan is flooded to the waist. Then down to Ramkemheng it is dry.

[TEXASMAC]

I finally find a great vacation location and first there was the whole Red Shirt thing, and now its flooding away.

[Torurot]

Now Barracuda bitten by Thai disk drought disaster
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/11...da_price_rise/
Killer floods push up prices

By Chris Mellor €¢ Posted in Storage, 14th November 2011 16:46 GMT

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The deadly floods that wrecked electronic component factories in Thailand are sending Barracuda disk drive prices rocketing.

We're told a 3TB Seagate Barracuda XT priced £171.95 ($274) on 22 September from eBuyer now costs £289.99 ($462), £118.04 ($188) more. Ouch! That's a 68 per cent price rise.

A Reg reader says the rate of price inflation on that works out at roughly 9 per cent per week or about 9,000 per cent compound per year. A scant consolation is that it's a saving of £60.01 on an earlier £350 list price. ®

[freddiefrankfurt]

Dear co-members,

I know I don't post that often here, and I can't promise to do so in the future, the 24-hour day limit is my enemy at the moment  

Anyway, I hope I can get some serious advice.
I booked a trip to Bangkok end of December, but I could still cancel it without big loss. I am insecure what to do!
I hear and read horrible scenarios about Thailand in general and Bangkok in particular.
I understand that Central Bangkok (Sukhumvit, Siam Square etc.) are and will be dry. But then there are those terrifying stories about water-borne diseases, snakes and other reptiles leaving their natural habitat, mosquitoes carrying and transmitting diseases like the Dengue fever.
I wonder if one would be affected staying in Central Bangkok, or do this hazards only exist in areas that were flooded. I don't know much about all that stuff, but mosquitoes do fly, don't they?
Maybe I am very naive, I admitted already my knowledge about all this is next to non-existent.
I have been to Bangkok many times (ok, probably not as many as most of you), and never ever did I have any qualms about going, but now I am really not sure what to do.
I am sure I don't have to tell you how much I want to go, how much I miss Bangkok and its LBs (and maybe some Girls, too   ).
I want to go, that's for sure, but of course I don't want to risk more than I have to.

Enough written, I hope you got my point, and even more I hope that some of you experienced guy can give me some sound advice.

Thanks in advance!

[rxpharm]

I would suggest you keep monitoring the situation as it develops - however I would not suggest you cancel your trip to Thailand!

If things are not good in Bangkok by the date you fly, there are several alternative places you can visit for LB action - Phuket, Pattaya, Koh Samui, and to a lesser extent Chiang Mai all areas not affected by the current floods.

[Torurot]

Here's a very good update showing the immense size of the water. Image from yesterday

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Nat...w.php?id=76427

Go to the link for a comparison (and other related links) with the equivalent time in 2008 (two comparison pictures)

Floods continued to menace Southeast Asia in mid-November 2011. On November 17, 2011, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA€™s Terra satellite captured the top image. For comparison, the bottom image shows the same region three years earlier, on November 12, 2008.

The images use a combination of visible and infrared light to better distinguish between water and land. Water is navy blue. Vegetation is green. Bare ground and urban areas are earth-toned. Clouds are pale blue-green.

In Cambodia, T̫nl̩ Sab (Tonle Sap) is significantly swollen in 2011, continuing a pattern that has lasted since August. Meanwhile, a massive floodwater lake appears along Thailand۪s Chao Phraya River, north of Bangkok.

On November 14, CARE International reported a substantial death toll from the floods: 100 in Vietnam, 250 in Cambodia, and more than 500 in Thailand. Floods in Thailand threatened the 12 million residents of Bangkok, CARE said.

On November 17, Bangkok Post reported that efforts to protect the city from flooding were raising tensions along the city perimeter, where residents outside of the flood barriers coped with rising water. Thailand€™s Disaster Prevention and Mitigation Department confirmed the deaths of 567 people, and stated that more than 5 million residents in 20 provinces were affected.

References
Bangkok Post. (2011, November 17). Khlong Hok Wa barrier torn down. Accessed November 17, 2011.
CARE International. (2011, November 14). Southeast Asia: Heavy flooding isolates communities and destroys livelihoods. ReliefWeb. Accessed November 17, 2011.

NASA images courtesy LANCE/EOSDIS MODIS Rapid Response Team at NASA GSFC. Caption by Michon Scott.

Instrument:
Terra - MODIS

[thegame925]

I have been told that the big 5 star hotels have given rooms over to staff and their families.

Two sources have told me that 64 families are house in the Mandarin Oriental - another has said she heard 200 families were housed in the Mandarin Oriental.
The Shangri-la, Hilton, and other hotels are said to be housing staff too.

Certainly inward air traffic is officially 25% down at the airport compared to the same time last year, so the hotels will have the capacity to house staff.

I spoke yesterday to someone I know who has a shop in The River City Shopping Complex and she said that water had not yet breached the ground floor and they felt that the high tide had passed and waters should now recede, but that business had been hard hit by lack of tourists. She also reported that on the other side of the river, the Peninsula€™s terrace had been flooded.

I'm doing my annual stint for the Saudis, leaving Riyadh 14th December although I will only be in Bangkok two nights before heading to Phang Nga (90 minutes from Bangla, Phuket) but will be back in Bangkok by 1st January and expect the waters to have cleared.

The Christmas Season is a big earner for Bangkok. I feel sure the Government will put every recourse into ensuring that the places where the tourists spend money are free of water and any associated debris or problems.

[Torurot]

Another recent satellite update.

Images at the link
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Nat...w.php?id=76545

By late November 2011, floods were receding around Thailand€™s capital city of Bangkok, but only slowly. These images from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA€™s Terra satellite compare conditions around the city on November 28, 2011 (top), and November 1, 2011 (bottom).

These images use a combination of visible and infrared light to better distinguish between water and land. Water is navy blue. Vegetation is bright green. Bare ground and urban areas are earth-toned. Clouds are pale blue-green.

Both images show significant flooding, but flood waters have receded over the course of the month. Lower water levels are especially apparent east of the city.

Although flood conditions had improved in some areas by late November, many residents of Bangkok suburbs continued to cope with standing water, according to news reports. As flood waters retreated from some areas, Bangkok-area residents discovered unwelcome squatters: crocodiles and poisonous snakes, USA Today reported.

References
Bangkok Post. (2011, November 29 [Thailand time zone]). Sukhumbhand denies Froc request to raise sluice gate. Accessed November 28, 2011.
Wake, D., Agence France-Presse. (2011, November 27). Misery lingers for Bangkok€™s €œforgotten€ flood victims. Accessed November 28, 2011.
Weerawong, A., Associated Press. (2011, November 27). Receding floods reveal crocs in Bangkok. USA Today. Accessed November 28, 2011.

NASA image courtesy LANCE/EOSDIS MODIS Rapid Response Team at NASA GSFC. Caption by Michon Scott.

Instrument:
Terra - MODIS

[Torurot]

Some good news

WD dries out flood-trashed fab, pumps out first disks
Deadly Thai disaster cost biz at least $50m to clean up
http://www.channelregister.co.uk/201...ve_production/

By Paul Kunert €¢ Posted in Enterprise, 2nd December 2011 11:16 GMT

WD has partially restored hard disk production at one of its flood-hit fabs in Thailand and expects to start pumping water from its second facility within ten days.

The drive maker said that power at one of its buildings in Bang Pa-In - which had been under six feet of water since 15 October - was restored on 26 November and production recommenced four days later.
[]

"The passion, perseverance, ingenuity and execution exhibited by the WD team has been extraordinary and enabled us to make substantial progress in partially restoring our operations in Thailand," said WD CEO John Coyne.

WD - which last month enlisted the help of Thai frogmen in a bid to salvage equipment - has also removed submerged disk head slider manufacturing kit from the Bang Pa-In site for "assessment, decontamination and refurbishment", and began work on restoring other buildings on the site.

Head slider fabrication at Bang Pa-In and a new fab location in Penang, Malaysia, will crank out gear from the March quarter. The hard drive production line at WD's Navanakorn facility in Thailand is still under two feet of water and is expected to be "pumped dry" within ten days after which the equipment will be tested.

"Much work remains to be done but we couldn't be more pleased with the effort and results thus far," said Coyne.

WD said "unusual charges" related to the flooding, HGST acquisition expenses and a legal case with Seagate are forecast to cost $225m to $275m this quarter. It expects to file a property damage claim of at least $50m and make an additional claim for lost sales.

The industry is expected to produce approximately 120 million hard drives this quarter, well short of demand, which is estimated to be 170 to 180 million, WD said.

"The company believes that significant industry supply constraints will continue in the March quarter and beyond," it said.

Hard drive prices shot up in the weeks following the flooding, which also wrecked the production of other tech including PCs.

In other Western Digital news, the firm is trying to sell off some 3.5in drive production capacity to meet the conditions set by the European Commission before it finalises the acquisition of HGST, which it reckons should be done and dusted by March. ®

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