“Disaster strips away choice until only instinct remains.”— Joan Didion (adapted).
Southern Thailand had already been whispering warnings.
We’d walked through the tsunami museum, stood in front of photographs of devastation, then driven along rebuilt coastlines that looked calm, orderly, finished. History felt contained - something that had happened, been explained, and moved on from.
Then the rain came.
As a sailor, I always check the weather and the barometer we have in the truck, unless we are up a mountain and then it doesn’t work.
I remember seeing the headlines about storms in Southeast Asia, but we were on a beach parked safely at the time, and it was one of those “it won’t be us, it’s somebody else who has the problem” moments. As the news gathered pace, I started to think maybe we would be affected, but probably not.
At the bottom of our entrance stair way. Is it going up or down? It was going up.
When we started to head south in Thailand, flood warnings began appearing on Google Maps in the areas we were planning to drive through. My thought was that’s fine, they’ll be gone by the time we get there.
A quiet reminder of the recent past in Thailand and other countries.
As we drove south, unease crept in. We looked silently out at swollen rivers and flooded fields as we passed them. Then we started to see houses knee deep in water, and then bang! we came across our first flooded road. I remember stopping, looking at it, and thinking, shit, we have to get through this. There wasn’t really an alternative route. Turning back wasn’t a clean option either - the rain was moving faster than we were, and whatever lay behind us was likely no better than what lay ahead.
Almost up to our waist deep, we drove through the first flooded road. We anxiously noted that most lorries and all cars didn’t attempt the crossing. I reasoned that our ex-military truck, with diff locks and four-wheel drive, gave us an edge, and we pushed on.
This was what we saw. Clear roads followed by flooded areas. Can we get through or will this one flood our truck?
One of the scariest things about driving in those conditions was not knowing what we were actually driving on. We couldn’t see the road - or whether the water had lifted manhole covers, or concealed a motorbike we were about to run over. Cars lay submerged at the edges where drivers had drifted off line. The road was supposed to be raised, but it was invisible. A foot or two either way and we’d have been joining them.
We got through what we thought was the worst of it though, and soon the water subsided. But as we drove on, there was more. And the subsequent flooded roads were worse. At one point, I just followed a lorry, one of the few vehicles attempting to get through. We both made it, and at that moment, confidence was high. So we just kept pushing forward.
Looking back, I do wonder if that was the right response. The first crossings felt instinctive; after that, we were leaning more on the fact that nothing had gone wrong yet. Success has a way of disguising itself as judgement. We just kept making the same bet, with the odds getting worse at each crossing, until eventually we reached higher ground.
Still shaken but relieved to have made it through, we headed to a petrol station for the night. The forecourt was tidy and elevated, properly marked, lit up with bright lights and clear lanes - a place with rules, order and authority. It felt solid. It felt safe.
Dry and high, we settled down and slept. We felt we were in control now: we had the truck, we hadn’t panicked, and the decision to push on seemed, at least for the moment, to have been rewarded.
The petrol station where we took refuge. When we parked and went to bed, it was dry and then it got flooded and more flooded.
The following morning, Charlotte woke early and woke me to show me that the water was still rising. It had caught up with us and was now around knee deep.
Processing these moments now in the comfort of a dry 30 degree Malaysian beach campsite (guessing) it’s hard to know what exactly went through my mind. I ran the “what if we stay, what if we go” scenarios through my head and realised we had the lorry engine to consider, and the generator too, both with exhausts.
Our first instinct was to wait for the water to subside and then move on. But it didn’t subside. It kept rising. And we just sat there trying to keep busy, endlessly checking news reports about the area, looking for reasons to believe we were making the right choice. We didn’t find any.
As our situation deteriorated in real time, the residue of any confidence left from the night before was washed away. Now it seemed like if we stayed put the best case might be simply us living in our very own indoor swimming pool. In that scenario, the damage would be catastrophic, maybe beyond repair (Did I ever mention that the truck isn’t insured?). The worst case scenario; well I’m not sure that thought fully surfaced at the time.
We were cornered and had no experience of what to do and, because this was unprecedented, neither did anyone else. So looking out at the rising water a decision was made. We had to make a bolt for it. This was based on nothing more than pure fear and a need to try and take back control and protect Charlotte. I just went into “I have to sort this” mode and probably blocked out the real danger in favour of thinking that if we could just get out, we could carry on, and that this flooding had to end somewhere.
So we left our habitation box and waded through the murky water into the cab, having no clue what was in the water; it wasn’t pleasant.
And we drove through all of it. It was horrendous. People waist-deep in water walking to safety, homes and shops flooded. Safety boats manned by police had already been launched and were delivering drinking water and picking up people who needed help.
Stopping simply wasn’t an option. In various places, people had appointed themselves as marshals and were telling me to slow down. I didn’t. I just kept on at a pace I thought was the right speed. I’d been told that whilst driving if you keep the engine running, it should push the water away from the exhaust, as long as you don’t stall the engine, you should be fine. And you should be fine in such a well-equipped state of the art overlander. But what about everyone else?
View from the drivers window as we passed through the floods.
We saw people wandering the streets for unknown reasons, and yet, we couldn't help or even feel any sympathy at the time. At times our wake pushed water back into already flooded homes and unsteadied people wading through it - damage caused not by the flood, but by us trying to escape it. It was a case of each man for himself, and only after did we really reflect on what was happening to others.
I’ve been asked since, when I knew we were safe, but there was no moment. Just fewer flooded roads. Longer dry stretches. And the uneasy realisation that we hadn’t hit the next one. There was no euphoria - only a numbness, and the knowledge that we were safe while others weren’t. I think we simply didn't know how to process what we had driven through and the carnage that the flood had caused. It was terrifying, but eventually we knew we were safe, and many others weren't.
Charlotte was quiet after we got out. There was a brief flare of words between us - not anger, just nerves finally letting go - and then it passed as quickly as it came.
Maybe we felt guilty and perhaps your mind shuts down to protect you. We had been through so much already in China, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Nepal, and this was yet another terrifying situation to deal with.
I’m still trying to make sense of it.
What still sits badly with me isn’t that we drove through floodwater, but how easily the first success rewrote the rules. Each crossing felt justified by the last, until instinct replaced judgement and fear took over completely. We got out. Others didn’t. And the difference between those two outcomes wasn’t preparation or skill as much as timing and luck - which is a harder thing to live with than any flooded road.
The rest of Thailand passed quickly.
We didn’t want to hang around in the southern states, which are subject to ongoing insurgency attacks by Malay Muslim groups. Locals accept it as background noise, and visitors are told not to worry. We researched it. Since 2004, more than 4,500 people have been killed and over 9,000 wounded, but we were reassured that Westerners aren’t targeted. That may well be true. After the floods, though, probability no longer felt abstract. We’d had enough reminders of how quickly things can turn.
So we kept driving. Long days, few stops, and a steady push towards the Malaysian border. Not running, just moving on.
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