Adrift.

On ceding Siamese territories to the east of the Mekhong to the French, Rama V ensured he would remain forever in the annals of Thai folklore. More than for advancing – and uniting – the country through key infrastructure reforms, the king has become remembered, and fondly so, for the act of sacrificing a 'limb' to save the 'body'.

Over the last hundred years, though, the continuation of the nation's modernization in the shape of industrial zones, housing estates and entertainment complexes has been so unchecked that it has transformed the Thai central basin into a concrete jungle with little of the natural irrigation once provided by canals, forests and fields.

And now, as the contents of hundreds of thousands of suburban addresses of Thailand’s lower and middle classes float abandoned in stagnant waters, in the wake of northern run-off that’s been trapped by the city ‘big bag’ wall, Thailand is again making a sacrifice.

This time, however, the flood is proof that unifying nationalistic rhetoric is not exactly watertight. The convenient truth, for Bangkok, is that the city must be saved to save the country. The real truth is though that the ‘body’ has become severed from the ‘head’. The two are on separate courses: from the capital the country has truly come adrift.

*Frame grabs from the forthcoming short film from The Human Eye Corporation.