Canals, rivers, floods

 Mentioned earlier that I had no idea about the canals, and generally there being water everywhere. I have to remember Thailand is in the wet tropics, not the dry tropics.

Case in point: The Mae Ping River flows through Chiang Mai from north to south. It doesn't look like much: significantly smaller than the Willamette, for example. But this river flooded in October 2024, and put a huge swath of Chiang Mai underwater.

Once we knew to look, the damage was visible everywhere. Sidewalks were heaved, storm drains filled in with silt and debris. The Mae Ping, unlike Pacific NW rivers, carries a huge amount of silt, and once the water receded there was a thick layer of dirt everywhere.  In places you can see big mounds of it shoveled up out of the street and out of people's homes, and just left .

In the park where I took the picture of the flame tree, there's a small canal with fountains. The first few times we went there, the canal was dry and the bottom was full of dried mud, which was being dug out (bucket by bucket). The last time we stopped by there, the canal was full of water and the fountain was running again.

Here's a thing: Chiang Mai is flat. It's the flattest place I've ever lived, except maybe Minneapolis. We walked a lot (a lot even for me), and google maps walking directions inevitably said "Mostly flat." Topo maps of the city show basically no relief. So when the river came over its banks, which are diked up above the surrounding streets, it spread out... and spread out, and spread out.

And all the canals. I'm not kidding, there are nearly as many canals as main streets. They all apparently connect back to the Mae Ping, but with so little slope I am not sure how they maintain flow. There are pumping stations on at least some of the canals, for example around the old city and in the little park, so I guess the whole network keeps itself moving somehow.

Chiang Mai’s Canals

Little dragons, sleeping in the sun

you seem so tame. What works of hands,

what years of labor shaped this land?

Who knew when to call it done?

Do these sleeping dragons dream

of flowing free across the valleys

where now wind crooked streets and alleys?

Do canals remember they were streams?

Little dragons, sleeping in the mud,

caged in canals cut to human shape

do you hold a long longing for escape?

Do you dream thunder and wake in flood?

 

 I cannot find anything about the history of these canals but I'm guessing the local peoples have been digging for irrigation and flood control since the beginning of the agricultural age. Chiang Mai was founded in 1296, and presumably the canal that moats the old city (which was the original city) was started around then and completed some years later. But I'm guessing the canal that brings water to the moat, called Khlong Mae Kha, at least partially predates the city, and was extended and expanded to supply the moat.