Working on The Chain Gang
They had the prisoners from the local jail out last week doing their usual job of cleaning the drains which here in Bangkok are clogged and useless.
As soon as it rains, the bunged-up drains back up and localised flooding is commonplace, and as we're in the rainy season right now...
Allegedly, only prisoners who are well behaved and have served a certain length of sentence are allowed out on the work gangs and as you can see, they all wear pink baseball caps, I assume for easy visibility!
There were only a couple of guards with them, as they trawled the sewers who sat under the trees in the shade as the lads worked an obviously well-practiced routine.
What they do is feed a drain-sized barrel on a string down the grate and pull it through from the next grate and then scoop up the gunge in buckets and dump it on a truck.
I'd hate to imagine the shit they pull through as Thailand's urban sprawl is hardly the cleanest places and all the street vendors simply dump waste into the nearest grate they are trading by.
Yo heave-ho boys!
I won't even mention the snakes, rats and god knows whatever else that live down there.
Anyway, despite the dreadful job, it must be a nice change from being stuck in a stinking over-crowded prison and I believe they are paid a small allowance to spend in the prison shop on food as the daily budget for food and gas in a Thai prison, per prisoner is just 49Baht (£1.20 GBP, $1.50 USD) and that's based on a nominal prison population of 190 000 prisoners! source
Did it do the job?
Well, those photos we taken just two weeks ago. Since then, we've had some torrential downpours and so, taken from the same location yesterday...
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My days!
I wonder if there is a similar (growing) problem as here as more and more land is hard surfaced and there is less and less ground to absorb heavy rain.