– The Good the Bad and the Wet in Tempestuous Thailand (April 2011).
A cold bucket of water to the face. That is how the day begun. And from there it only got wetter. That is the kind of day I was having, my clothes were dripping, my hair sticking to my face and as I turned to escape the onslaught of water I was hit from behind by another even bigger bucket and I lost my balance nearly falling into the canal below me. But I was laughing, not crying, not angry, but laughing – because this was the famous Thai festival of Songkran and I had signed up for this madness like the thousands of other drenched people around me in the famous city of Chiang Mai in northern Thailand. But wait I am getting ahead of myself, let’s start at the beginning, the wet wet beginning.
It had been raining for days, not the soft drizzle of London that slowly chips away at your soul like Chinese water torture, no not that kind of rain– this was real pouring rain and it was not letting up. But we were determined to not let it beat us so we headed off to the Khao Sok National Park in central Thailand to try make the best of the rain and see some beautiful scenery. But after a few days of hiking in the rain, being sucked dry by leeches, bitten by a dog and having my face scratched by ‘jungle spikies’ (thorn bushes) while tubing down a river, in the rain of course, I had had about enough of this rain.
We hopped a bus to the nearest town to try escape to somewhere dryer but we did not realise that the flooding in Thailand was only beginning. We managed to get a bus out of Surat Thani, which was showing the damages of the flood already, we were calf deep in water getting into the bus and very grateful to even be able to escape at all. As we drove north we could see rivers overflowing, houses completely under water and trees with a few branches only just sticking out of the flowing brown water.
Eight long hours later we were in Bangkok with not a drop of rain in sight. Halleluiah, we were dry and had escaped the worst of it, but we were lucky not everyone could escape like us and local people were killed in mudslides in Krabi or drowned in flooded areas across central and southern Thailand. And this would not be the only flood of the year, it would all begin again in November when Bangkok was under meters of water and the airport was being sandbagged to try stop the flooding, but that only came later and at the time we were just grateful to be out of the rain.
We then had nearly a week without rain, bliss. By then we had seen the sights of Bangkok and had moved on to historic and beautiful Chiang Mai in northern Thailand and we were getting ready to get wet again, not from thunder showers but from the famous 3 day festival of Songkran that was about to start in a few days time.
We were experiencing all that Chiang Mai has to offer, trekking in the jungle, visiting hill tribe villages and learning to cook delicious Thai food. We still had a few days before the festival began and were heading to a nearby Monastery to learn the art of Vipassana meditation for a few days and as we drove out of Chiang Mai the local children were starting the festival a few days early. As we left town I was hit in the back of the head by water flying through the open window behind me. I turned to see squealing, delighted children throwing buckets of water at passing cars, just a little hint of what was to come.
After a few days of meditation we headed back into Chiang Mai and arriving back on the first day of the festival was not the smartest idea we had ever had. Our tuk tuk was attacked as we drove along the streets to our hotel and by the time we got there our bags were as soaked as we were; it seemed that everyone was fair game during Songkran, whether you had all of your worldly possessions on your back or not. So, not wanting to be spoil sports we extracted our electronics, set them out in the room to dry and hit the streets to join in the fun. Within minutes of walking out of the hotel door we were dripping wet and laughing. And that’s how we stayed for the next 3 days. We bought ourselves some buckets and headed down to the canal to join in the fun.
Songkran is the festival to celebrate Thai New Year and is associated with the Buddhist faith where Images of Buddha in homes and temples are ‘bathed’ in water mixed with Thai spices and monks and elders have their hands sprinkled with water by younger Thai people as a sign of respect. The cleansing of Buddha is supposed to bring good luck and prosperity for the New Year. This is the origin of the festival, but it has also now evolved into a full out water fight, which gives Thai people a chance to release frustrations and to cool off in the middle of the sweltering summer. It is celebrated every year from April 13th to 15th, in most places in Thailand the festival is celebrated just on the first or last day but if you are looking for full-out water warfare you should make sure you are in Chiang Mai where the full three days are all wet days.
Songkran is one of the craziest festivals I’ve ever experienced but it is also a display of community like I’ve never seen before. Everyone joins in from toddlers tipping buckets of water onto your feet to grandmothers sprinkling tiny droplets over your head in jest. Everyone has a bucket in hand that has a long string attached to the handle so you can dip it into the canal and then empty it onto an unlucky passer-by, or alternatively you could buy yourself a water pistol or drive around throwing buckets of icy water from moving vehicles. Teenagers take things to a new level attacking everyone without exception and ice-sellers make a fortune selling huge blocks of ice for people to use to fight icy-cold warfare. People on motorbikes are the most fun moving target and you don’t want to be caught out of ammunition or you will find yourself incredibly wet. Restaurants embrace the wet by allowing dripping people in to eat and even providing buckets of water outside so you can refill your water-pistol or bucket on your way out back into the fight. Work stops and it is impossible to enter or leave Chiang Mai until it’s over, and why would you want to leave anyway? In a country used to monsoons and prone to yearly flooding, people view wetness with complacency and have ceaseless fun with their favourite festival of water. After it was all over we left Thailand after consuming more canal water then is probably sanitary, with bags of damp clothing and a lifetime of fond memories.
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