Well I am a little nuts, so maybe you read that right the first time. I was actually tempted to edit the title to "Hammock Nuts" just to have a little fun with you. The river is still violent, but not like it was several days ago. If it's not raining it's misty and raining above us in the peaks, unreal weather.

I originally didn't want to sandbag because of wanting to keep plastic out of the soil, but it looks like it will be absolutely necessary in a few areas. Considering the amount of trash and plastic we've pulled out of the soil since moving in, I guess we have good enough karma to add a bit back in the form of sandbags. If we could get some bamboo to break through the sandbags and root, we could eventually reclaim those areas.

After seeing how fast the river moves when flooding, especially through a particularly narrow section on our property, I think tent platforms will be the most reasonable things to put near the river. Four legs and no walls or roof, and something hydrodynamic on the upstream side like a water deflector, or perhaps a torpedo-shaped tent platform 🤔.

We just got a few new varieties of bamboo for planting, one that doesn't spread aggressively and has tasty shoots, and another that grows slowly but makes nice and straight tubes good for furniture. There is also lots of local bamboo growing in the forest, will probably supplement with some of those too.

For the most part Cambodian weather is mild and very predictable, and the flooding in the rest of the country doesn't even affect daily life at all, just ride your moto through a meter of water every in town like it's normal. But here in the mountains near the Thai border, this microclimate is really extreme. I would bet we have double the rainfall of the ricefield areas of the country.

Well, it's a bummer indeed, we've lost some truckloads of dirt for sure. However, the 60+ trucks we got recently only cost $500. My neighbor has an excavator with tracks, and when the rainy season stops, I'd like to see if he can get it in the river and scoop copious amounts of boulders to our riverbank. He's expensive, but he seems to like me, so I hope when the opportunity arises I can get a discount.

I don't know about the frog, but yellow is usually a no-no color. He wasn't concerned about me at all, couldn't even wake him up, so I assume he's got some incredible defenses.

Earthquakes is a whole other level of terror. I grew up near a fault line in the USA, and experienced a handful of baby quakes in Kentuckiana, but those were nothing compared to what's normal in Japan. When we lived in Ecuador for a bit, about every week in Quito I'd wake up in the middle of the night being tossed around in my bed. It was an unsettling feeling in such an old multi-story brick building that was not up to code.

It seems there is nothing but rain in this part of the world at the moment, from Asia to Australia. We are still getting daily rain here, haven't seen the sun in weeks.

I have been piling rocks on the river bank at the beginning of our property in preparation for a potential flood, and it looks like these efforts paid off. I did this at the corner of our first hut, and this hut was not damaged in the flood. We are considering sandbags to replace some of the areas heavily affected by the flood. Our cabin is maybe only 10 meters from the river, but also 20 or 30 meters above it too, and our brick house is 25 meters from the river, but also high above it.

It appears it's wet from Cambodian to Australia, although it seems Australia is having some astonishing floods at the moment. The forest and the mountains here catch all the clouds that roll in from the ocean only 30km away.

So far we are okay, but lost a few chunks of land to the river. Our neighbors lost several fruit trees and a hammock hut, so I guess we are pretty lucky.

The river has subsided, but the collapses haven't yet, the earth is completely saturated here, very unsettling. As soon as we get a day of full sun, it'll be enough to bake a thin layer of solid earth so we can walk around perhaps be able to disassemble the huts so we can use the wood to build something else, perhaps something that won't catch floodwater like a parachute. I'd love to make tent platforms, but with a hull or water deflector of some kind on the upstream side.

We see floods almost every couple of days, but this recent one was obviously beyond the norm. We asked the locals who also lost land and some structures/fruit trees, and they all said the river gets wild and crazy like this once or twice a year, but this years was more extreme than most have ever seen since they've lived here. At least I now know maximum water levels and speed, any future riverside projects will be constructed to be hydrodynamic, perhaps a tent platform with the upriver side shaped like the hull of a boat to deflect water when it goes under.

🙏🙏🙏 I hear Australia is getting some record rainfall too. On the other side of the mountains we see every day is the ocean, but a few kilometer wide strip of Thailand extends south several hours from us preventing Cambodian sea access. Being so close to the see, I see the clouds always rolling past, but the mountains here grab the clouds and make them drop their rain before moving on. It's an extreme microclimate here.

Anxiously awaiting some clear water so I can survey the damage and see how much erosion the river has caused.

🙏🙏🙏 The rain continues to fall, and now the Earth is very soft, even the places with lots of roots and original soil. We've lost a few more chunks of land and now one of the huts is beyond repair. I am however thankful to see the full might of the river, it gives me a picture for where we can build safely in the future.

I might have some things built near the water's edge in the future, but perhaps just tent platforms without a roof because if one went underwater for a few days it would suffer less damage.

If next year's biblical flood is even just a meter lower, it would do 90% less damage. By looking at a river, you can always see its maximum water levels from recent years, and this year's flood has definitely brought those scars a little more uphill.

Some damage done, hammock huts will have to be disassembled and/or relocated to safer ground. I can't believe the rain is still falling, everywhere feels like sponge under my feet in the village.