Songkran 2552

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Right, Songkran, the year is 2552. On our return from our 3 day trek we all went out into Chaing Mai and shared a few drinks. This effectively wiped out the next day for us so we sat around feeling sorry for ourselves and drinking fruit shakes and 'falang' food (western food). The next day was Sunday and we had booked ourselves onto a days cooking course. Chesty had come down with some disease so wasn't feeling great but manned up and between us we rustled up some cracking thai dishes. Highly recommended are the papya salad and sweet sticky rice with mango. If you play your cards right then they may be recreated. That night we sat in an Irish pub and watched some rugby.

Monday- the first official day of the greatest new year celebration in the world- SONGKRAN! Chesty, still keeping the toilet company left me to take on the whole of Chaing Mai, so off i went, took one step out of the guest house and the little thai girl got me soaked. Game on! I went and bought what turned out to be the worst water gun ever. I strolled around the moat which surrounds the old city, getting drenched and spraying feeble amounts of water at people. The whole city pretty much comes to a standstill, the Moat has a one way road either side of it going all the way round the old part of the city. People pile into the back of pick ups with buckets and huge bins of iced water and just crawl along the moat getting people. At this point i thought i would return to the guest house and check on Chesty.

On my return, Joanna (kiwi girl), who we had been trekking with turned up on a scooter and was keen to go for a drive. At this point I slipped on the tiles and hit my big toe into the step! I looked down to assess the damage. It wasnt pretty, weird angle of toe overlapping my next toe. oh well, it must be dislocated i thought, so stumbled upstairs to see Chesty and at this point I tried to put my toe straight, then asked Chesty to try. No luck there. Joanna being female thought it best we went to hospital so i climbed on the back of her scooter and off we went. dodging traffic and iced water was not easy but great fun. My thai hospital experience was very good, i highly recommend them. Wheeled around in a wheel chair is fun and I when I took control I pulled some cracking 360s in the corridors. The X ray showed i ha d broken it. Doctors suggestions included inserting a wire or having a cast. I wasn't interested in either, so he fitted a little metal splint. job done. Joanna payed the bill as I only had 500 Baht on me and it came to 6,000. Off we went, two of us on this scooter driving around Chaing Mai getting soaked everywhere we went. IConsidering I hjad broken my toe I had a great day with Joanna. We went out that evening. Songkran had begun.

Day 2 of Songkran- Joanna left first thing in the morning to go to Laos. Chesty was feeling better so the two of us headed out to face the music. He armed himself with a gun and I opted for a pink bucket, very under rated. Soon into the battle we bumped into Suz who kindly suggested we went for a drink. It would have been very rude to turn this down so we headed to the Rasta Bar where we sat on the road side listening to live reggae music, drinking beer and whiskey and having the best water fight ever. The three of us had an amazing day, anything went! We agreed to meet Suz later but this turned out to be impossible as she was pretty drunk and turns out she couldn't remember what time we said to meet and where. That was the last we saw of Suz unfortunately. Copious amounts of water to the face plus beer gets you very drowsy so me and chesty headed home.

We woke up very early the next day to get our bus up to Chang Khong (the border town with Laos).

in conclusion Songkran is incredible, i can't recommend it enough, great couple of days playing in water and breaking my big toe. Bring on Laos!

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