Songkran

Songkran is a water festival to celebrate the new year in Thailand. It’s basically where the whole country stops and has a full on water fight for 4 or so days. In Chiang Mai it’s apparently celebrated with more gusto than anywhere else in the country – so although there’s 4 big days of water fighting you can expect to get soaked for a few days leading up to that too.

Chiang Mai has an old moat around the inner part of the city that’s still got water in it. There are main roads on both sides of it. A typical day runs like this: People line either side of the the moat and the main streets armed with water pistols, super soakers, buckets and water else they can get their hands on. Then they proceed to drench anyone that walks, rides or drives past. No one is spared. Those on the moat side of the road If you aren’t on the side of the road use the moat to refill their ammunition, those on the other side have hoses coming out of shops, restaurants and bars constantly filling up large drums to give them ample water supplies.

Meanwhile those that are driving around in traffic aren’t to be out done. Pickup trucks are the main type of car on the road in these parts and these will usually have 5-12 people in the back along with a full drum of water and the necessary arms to dish out their own attacks.

Traffic crawls around the moat while everyone blasts each other with water – all with a smile and good spirits. The bars open early and pump music out onto the street and Thais and tourists dance, drink and get soaked together having a great time of it. It’s not just for kids either. There were entire families getting into it and plenty of people over 50 giving as good as they got. The more enterprising people were buying huge blocks of ice off the street and putting them in their drums. This made the water ice cold. I gotta tell you I’d prefer to be blasted with manky but warm moat water over a bucket of iced tap water any day. Especially when it was flying out of the back of a pickup and smacking into your back – that bloody hurts! Brrrr!

The water fights aren’t confined to the main streets. It doesn’t matter where you go you’re bound to get soaked from head to toe and stay that way until you go home to change. We were staying just inside the moated area about 100m from the main road. Kids lay in ambush all around. I was always soaked within seconds of leaving the guesthouse. The only time it’s safe to walk the streets is before 10am or after 6pm when the sun starts going down. Any other time and you’re a target. As a result I’ve got no photos since the camera would have been wrecked. Some brave souls had their cameras out anyway. Check their photos here.

If you can’t beat them join them. I stocked up with a 1.8 litre super soaker, a half litre hand gun and a small bucket and hit the streets. One of my favourite moments was when we were standing out the front of a nice hotel having a war with the people across the road next to the moat. This part of the street was blocked to traffic but a bus load of people had to get through to drop people at the hotel. At first we formed a blockade and soaked the bus. Then we let it through. It parked out the front of the hotel entrance and the poor bastards inside had a 20 metre dash from the bus door to the inside of the hotel where staff were waiting for them with fresh towels. Ha Ha!! We formed a guard of honour that the tourists could dash along. Those that couldn’t get right up close were perched in readiness wherever they could position them selves to get a good shot. Turns out the bus was full of westerners in their 50s and 60s. They had no idea what they’d gotten themselves into. As each one took it in turns to leave the bus the hundred or so people taking aim would unload on them so that they were absolutely drenched by the time they got inside. It was gold!

I wasn’t always on the attacking side though. One day Peach and I took a large tuk-tuk up a mountain nearby to check out a temple there. The one we got was lucky enough to have closed sides but unfortunately it had an open back. The traffic was a nightmare so we’d often be in gridlock when someone would run out behind the tuk-tuk and throw a bucket of water in at us. My attempts at defense with my super soaker where hopeless under such incursions. After artfully dodging a couple of buckets with minimal impact one got me front on. As expected I got soaked. From then on it was a no fear situation and I regularly hung out the back of the vehicle and unloaded on anyone within range.

Long live Songkran!