If you live in SE Asia you no doubt heard the stories (or perhaps felt it yourself) about the 7.7 earthquake that rocked Myanmar and was felt all throughout the area. You have probably also seen the videos of the hotels shaking in Bangkok and the swimming pools that were overflowing to the streets below. And you almost certainly saw the video of the large building collapsing in Bangkok online somewhere.
As you would expect to happen, a lot of people were concerned about me and others that live near where this happened because they already had heard that the quake originated in Myanmar and Chiang Mai is considerably closer to the source than Bangkok is and many of these people contacted me to ask me if I was ok and what is going on.
Well, I'm here to tell you that it was so minor in Chiang Mai that when I got the frantic messages from people on the other side of the world, this was the first I was actually hearing about it. What I am saying is that I didn't even know it happened.
From what I have read there were some buildings evacuated, although I don't know which were - I presume the taller ones - and there was some minor property damage which is understandable since a lot of the building practices here consist of "if you can get it to stand up, it's fine."
When I asked around with my friends about anything happening to them most of them that live here said the same as me in that they didn't even know it was happening until they were alerted by people that don't live here and then I found a few pictures like the one above where the fish sauce aisle was decimated by some shaking.
You can see here that Chiang Mai is considerably closer to Myanmar/Burma and the epicenter was north of Mandalay, which is basically dead center in the country. We are MUCH closer than Bangkok yet most people didn't even notice it was happening. Why is that? Well, I don't really know but perhaps the fact that Chiang Mai is pretty high up as far as elevation is concerned and are basically a large city near the top of a mountain range had something to do with it. You'd have to ask a geologist about that because it would just be raw speculation on my part.
From what I have heard this quake was felt in the southern parts of Vietnam as well so the tremors traveled quite a ways. If someone hadn't told me about it and I didn't have internet access I honestly wouldn't have even known about it.
I am not trying to downplay how serious this all is because apparently more than 2500 people lost their lives in a rather gruesome fashion in Myanmar.
Myanmar is a "junta government" meaning that the leaders were not elected and instead seized power by force. Therefore this government very rarely asks for any help from anyone since they are not recognized as being a legitimate government. From what I have heard they have reached out to the international community for help though, and I really hope that governments of the world can see past the issues that they have with their ruling class and get over there and help the common person. We have a lot of migrant Burmese workers here in Chiang Mai and they have been very distraught about what is going on in their home country.
Hopefully the world can see past the politics and get over there and help this country without any sort of ulterior motives.
In the meantime just know that basically nothing happened here in Chiang Mai and I suppose a lot of that has to do with the fact that we are in smokey season where our air pollution is off the damn charts and this basically puts everyone in a dull mood for a few months.
