It's on everyone's lips, 'num tuam.' But it's usually followed with a smile that underscores the seriousness of the situation.

Angthong is submerged. Slowly, but surely, over the last three weeks, water has engulfed the whole city. Unlike other cities in Central Thailand, Angthong's Business District is very centralized - and now this hub is under water. The golden bowl in the center of town, the symbol of Angthong, is defiantly keeping it's head above the watershed, as the flood spreads out to the peripheries of the town.

The market wasmoved to the main road on Angthong. It all looked pretty sweet, and had the feeling of a country fair in the early days. But over the last two weeks, most of the stalls have moved out to the bypass, escaping the rising tide of the Chayoa Praya. And rubbish and refuge is accumulating on the sides of the road where flood victims have also set up their new homes in makeshift shacks.

According to a local, its only a matter of a few days before the bypass is flooded. But the people of Anthong go about their business with fortitude. As they say, necessity is the mother of invention. At one busy intersection, that is now a canal, local fishermen were frantically pulling in big cat fish. It's boom town here in Angthong for aquatic life, and the locals are capitalizing on it.

Another resourceful industry are the boat taxis. They will ferry you into town on plastic and woodencanoes -- for a return trip to Thai Farmers Bank, or Tops supermarket - for 40 baht . Floating around the 'old' market, conjures up popular flooded cliches, such as the Lost City of Atlantis. It really feels like a ghost town. The air clings and mosquito's rule the evenings. But that hasn't dampered the resident's spirits. Next to the local barbers, two shop residents were sitting on plastic chairs in the flooded water. Yet their contagious smiles and splashing around took the edge off the reality, that their lives have really been upturned.

And the mobile phone outlet who sold phones from the second floor of his shop. Customers would float by his shop in a boat, and climb up a latter to the second floor to make their purchases.

At one busy flooded intersection, I saw three little toddlers splashing around while their mother was washing her motor bike. Momentslater, her little daughter was floating down the torrent on the road. Luckily the mother grabbed her daughter before the torrent could. On this note, we lost a teenage boy at the school I teach at. He was in Matayom three. His two story house had flooded. While swimming under the family's flooded house, looking for things to save, he drowned. The death toll in Angthong is now seven. Though the novelty of floods might be alluring for children, large moving volumes of water are very dangerous.

We are all embracing ourselves for the next high tide next week. But the community is united, and where there is a will, their is a way. Though residents of Anthong are anchored in an an emergency zone, their spirit and sense of civic duty are buoyed. And that's what moved me most about this little agricultural town - a resilience in the face of adversity that was contagious.

Copyrigth Tommy B.