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Published: April 18th 2009
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I have found myself in the pearl of the north, Chiang Mai. My friends and I have teaching positions lined up and apartments to call our homes. This is the start of a new chapter in our Thai adventure. It is appropriate timing to begin something new because the Thai new year has just passed.
Thai new year is called Songkran. This is by far the coolest holiday I have ever encountered. I should say hottest and coolest, April is the hottest month in Thailand and man is it boiling. Traditionally the new year is celebrated by visiting elders and wats (Buddhist temples). While I imagine some people were doing this, many more were on the streets for absolutely epic water fights. It is a tradition to wash temples and Buddha images with special water on the new year. But since it is so hot, why not wash each other with hoses and buckets and water guns?
The new year lasts from April 13th-15th. None of that silly one day holiday stuff we are accustomed to in the West. This year the days fell on Mon-Wed... so why not start on Sunday? Thais love to move their holiday celebrations
around to get as many days out of them as possible. If a holiday is on Sunday it will be moved to Monday. As a soon to be teacher who will gets crazy amounts of holidays off, I approve of this protocol.
What does any of this mean? For four days the entire city of Chiang Mai, and most of Thailand for that matter, was completely shut down for a massive water fight. As I crossed the street on Sunday morning to get to an internet cafe I assumed I was save, the holiday was not supposed to begin until Monday after all. As I innocently crossed the street I was surprised by a sudden shot of water. I was the victim of a motor bike drive by water attack. It had began. For the next four days everything would be different, and by different I mean WET. You could not walk anywhere without getting soaked. It was time to get a water gun and fight back. There were many options... I decided a back pack water gun was necessary, no simple water pistol for me.
As I walked down the streets I was in complete awe of
the scene around me. It was some sort of mix of fourth of july/ mardi gras/ and MTV spring break. There were families picnicking along the moat, and food stalls with various sausages lining the streets. How the food was not ruined by the water will remain an absolute mystery to me. There were trucks carrying large barrels of water with rowdy passengers eager to pour it on any passerby. There were children operating huge hoses. Children crying on wet motor bikes. Children, dangerous and armed with larger guns than me. Some people gently splashed a small handful of water, it felt like some sort of baptism. Others poured the entire bucket as you attempted to run away. Some of these buckets, guns, and barrels were to be feared more than the rest. Some were filled with ice water.It seemed that part of the custom is to just take the water, not run or flinch. After several hours we began taking it like pros, ice water and all.
My favorite thing to do was have shoot offs with young children. Especially children who were caught off guard. Actually anyone who was caught off guard. As I approached one child
we eyed each other, we had some sort of eye agreement, we would not shoot each other. The truth was I could not shoot, my hands were full of beer. I needed to pass him to scramble and prepare my oh so powerful water gun. He saw it, he knew I was not to be trusted, and as I pretended to walk away, the child got me in the back. I threw down my beer and destroyed the little rascal. This was one of my proudest moments. Only second to when I got the preteen who was trying to touch up her makeup in a compact mirror. Songkran is no time to try to apply makeup, and I taught her this by shooting her in the face from behind. Priceless.
My apartment is next to a huge mall. For a week before Songkran we watched as multiple concert stages were constructed in front of the mall. On Tuesday, this became the setting for extreme partying. Unlike Sunday and Monday the street was shut down. Shut down and packed with Thais fully prepared with massive amounts of beer, rum, and whiskey. Brittney and I had the naive notion that we
across the moat
Chiang Mai is surrounded by a gate and moat. The moat water came in useful. would come participate in the water fight for maybe an hour or so. Little did we know we would be sucked in by covers of Spice Girls and Pink and the stellar dance moves of drunken Thais. My favorite dance move I saw was a man laying on his back, on the filthy ground, as he threw his arms around above him. Much like a dying bug really. Thais are extremely generous with their booze. They like to drink mixed drinks out of buckets, and they like to pour these buckets down your throat. The generosity of the Thais led to a long and amazing day and night of dancing and memory building.
The previous day we were also caught up in this generosity of Thais. As the day was coming to a close we found ourselves on a corner at a store front with a group of Thais and the whiskey just kept coming. The woman I interacted with the most spoke zero English. It was somehow conveyed that she wanted my friends and I to sing for her. This led to Zandy and I singing Akon's Nanana as a group of old Thai women wore huge smiles
and clapped. Our singing abilities were soon put to shame by the Thai woman's enchanting voice. I could have listened to her sing words I couldn't understand for hours.
Other than getting far too much joy out of shooting people with water, and getting soaked myself, we also got to wash the Buddhas. The Buddha images were paraded through town to be cleansed. It was incredibly beautiful. People spray rose water on them for good luck in the new year. But they are also washing away the old year. It was like the entire country got the bathe away everything that happened in the previous year and get a fresh start for the new year. I think filling a city with nothing but fun for 4 days straight is a perfect way to start anew. Now the streets have dried and the moat is refilling with the water that was depleted during the water fights, and it is time for my new beginnings in Chiang Mai.
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haha
I loled at the shooting of the preteen checking her makeup, ought to teach to little hussy. That festival looks amazing, I hope the weather was nice enough getting sprayed by all that icy water! I love the thai method of "scrubbing", Im glad you could have such a wodnerful experience to start your new beginnings! Love you!