For seven days May Noopannoy did not know if her father was dead or alive.
He lived alone in the densely populated neighbourhood of District 8 in Hat Yai, one of the worst-affected areas in the catastrophic floods that swept across south Thailand this week.
"I was very scared for my father because I couldn't contact him. Very, very scared. I couldn't work, I couldn't sleep, I couldn't eat," she told the ABC, after driving seven hours to reach him from her home in Phuket.
On Friday she arrived to an apocalyptic scene. Mud-caked furniture and other debris was piled in the streets, swept out from people's living rooms by gushing floodwaters.
Thailand’s Health Ministry estimates that more than 160 people were killed in the disaster across nine provinces, but at least 110 of those died in Songkhla, where Hat Yai is the capital.
Noopannoy was lucky to find her 60-year-old father alive.
He had barricaded himself on the first floor of this home.
The floods had submerged the ground floor, leaving him without food, electricity, water or a functioning phone for almost a week.
"Where is the government?" Noopannoy asked.
"They said 'Oh we can give money'. But it's too late, you know. Normally you should do something before this happens."
"They [local authorities] said 'Oh it's easy, we can handle this'. But they didn't handle anything. They just left everyone alone."
'For six days no-one came to take care of us'
As floodwaters receded, hundreds of people emerged on the streets, busying themselves by sweeping sludge out of their ground-floor homes and businesses. Others could only sit in stunned silence, staring at the mountains of waste that covered their neighbourhood.
Suddenly, a commotion erupted with people shouting and running down the street. An army truck had arrived with food. Residents told the ABC that this was one of the first signs they had seen that help was arriving.
"For six days no-one came here to take care of us. The water was so high, and they could not get in. We had to take care of each other," said Mao, a retired teacher.
For a whole night she said she had watched over an elderly grandmother across the street who was trapped in waist-deep water and hanging out of a first-floor window.
In the morning, Mao said the whole street worked together to rig up a flotation device to move her to a safer building.
Since then, she said the only people who had come to help were volunteers from almost 1,000 kilometres away, and the army.
"There was an army truck that came to deliver food. They gave me a packet of instant noodles and a box of milk. They said, 'That's it'. I waited in this long line, and all I got was a packet of instant noodle and a little box of milk. What is this? After the hardship that I've been through," she said.
The anger at authorities was palpable in District 8 and across Hat Yai city. At the height of the floods, about 77,000 people had reached out to authorities for help via social media, but only 16,000 evacuated, according to authorities.
Chonticha Darachot, 24, said she was trapped on her open-air roof for two days with her four-year-old daughter, Thanchanok, who was becoming sicker by the hour. She said she called the help lines relentless to get rescued.
"Every day they would pick up my calls, but nobody came to rescue us. I called the army. They took my calls, but nobody came. It was a matter of life or death, but nobody came," she told the ABC.
In the end, it was her neighbours who found a boat to evacuate them to a shelter.
A growing public backlash
As once-in-300-year rains deluged the region on November 21, the local government failed to warn and evacuate residents, assuring them that they had the situation under control.
Within 24 hours floodwaters made it impossible for tens of thousands of people to seek shelter, trapping them in their homes without supplies.
"This was the worst situation I've seen since I was born", said Chaiwat Surangsophon, 61, his hands covered in mud as he cleaned out the debris from his Chinatown noodle shop.
"In the past, even when the floods weren't that high, we would hear the engine of boats. We would hear the voice of rescue teams. But this time there was nothing. There was complete silence."
Facing a growing public backlash, Prime Minister Anutin Charnvirakul toured flood-affected areas four times since the disaster occurred.
His government has removed Hat Yai's district chief and transferred its police chief. He has also apologised, and approved more than $225 million in funds to help flood victims.
That money is desperately needed.
More than 33,000 homes have been damaged in Hat Yai and its surroundings, as well as hospitals, schools and more than 700 kilometres of roads, according to Thailand's Geo-Informatics and Space Technology Development Agency (GISTDA).
It has been a disastrous month throughout Asia, with floods, typhoons and cyclone-fuelled torrential rain killing about 600 people. Governments and rescue teams have been overwhelmed by the scale and strength of the calamities.
Large parts of Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines have been inundated by torrential rain for a week, with a rare tropical storm forming in the Malacca Strait.
Local authorities say more than 300 people died in Indonesia alone.
A cyclone in the South Asian island of Sri Lanka is the latest disaster to hit the region and has already claimed 150 lives.
