Songkran pt.2

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We filled our guns and left the cafe behind as we made our way into town to look for Amber. We plowed our way through the crowd and made our way up to Patong's main street, Bangla Road.
Bangla was cut off to vehicles for Songkran so it was just jammed with people, all soaking wet and having 5 second water battles with people as they walked past. Every shop, bar and restaurant on the street was filed with people defending themselves, shooting out into the crowd - the whole thing was a real sight to behold and was incredible fun.
About every 100 feet or so enterprising people set up garbage cans to fill your tank at for a fee; 10 baht for normal water, 20 for ice water. Ice water is absolutely the way to go if you want to get a reaction out of your target. When everyone is soaking wet just hitting them with warm water on a hot day won't do, they generally wont notice, but hit them with a quick blast of ice water and you'd think you'd shot them with a harpoon as they contort or run to get out of the way.
We slowly made our way down Bangla and around the corner to a huge mega mall where we met up with Amber who had armed herself with nothing more than a water bottle with a hole in the cap! We grabbed a quick bite to eat and set out to find our guest house.
We wandered the streets for a good hour and a half before we realized that we simply could not find the place. We were in the right area and on the right street but no matter how hard we tried we could find it. So after a last ditch effort on the telephone in another internet cafe, we gave up and got a room at a random guest house.
We all dried off, changed and prepped ourself for the night ahead, Amber loaded up about 10 water baloons and we filled our guns and stocked our dry bags with what we needed before setting out for Bangla road.
7-11 is pretty big in Thailand and there is usually one on every block, whats more, they sell beer and cheap. So we slowly fought our way from block to block, stopping at every 7-11 to grab a drink as we made our way to Bangla.
We'd had about 4 beers by the time we hit the road, where the party was in full swing. All the clubs were blasting out tunes and people were dodging back and forth, weaving through the crowd in various little water fights with one another. All the locals were happily interacting with foreigners and one another, making it easily one of the best nights in Thailand I had.
One highlight of the evening was when we all decided to shotgun a beer. We hit a local shop, grabbed three cheap beers and made our way out into the middle of the road to down our beers. We were poking holes in the cans when we realized we were getting more than a few curious stares from people. One particularly curious group of isralies approached us to ask what we were doing.
"Why are you making new holes when you have the one on top" they asked.
"Why I'm glad you asked" I said, "just watch".
We up-ended our beers, downing them in record time and as I'm basking in the glory that is the post shotgun buzz one of the isralies asks me how much beer is left in the can. I'll never forget the look of amazed discovery on their faces as I turned it over to show them it was empty. They all had this look of shock and wonder on their face as it dawned on them just how awesome this activity was.
One of them even fist pumped.
We continued on our way down the street, hosing various people and getting into more hilarious water fights than I can count before we finally called it a night and headed back to our room to dry off and crash out.
My first Songkran was a dripping wet success and I look forward to the next time where I can be better prepared!

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