Flooded: An Auto-Ethnography of the 2011 Bangkok Flood

In this personal account I report my perceptions, experiences, and conduct during the 2011 Bangkok flood, in which my home and neighbourhood have been badly inundated and damaged. Therefore, I draw on auto-ethnography as an increasingly popular, though controversial qualitative methodology in social sciences. Though personal, the account has some broader implications, deriving primarily from the examination of the relationship between my perceptions and conduct in the disaster and my life experiences and present social position, as set against the perceptions and conduct of my Thai wife, our neighbours, and the broader community. The contrast throws some light on an aspect of Thai culture rarely discussed in the literature: the Thai response to disaster.