Songkran

As I said in earlier post, Songkran is Thailand's New Years. It began on Saturday and ended on Wednesday (it sort of still went on during Thursday). Like I also said, Songkran is a huge, gigantic water fight.

Some things about Songkran:

• People are in the back of cars with garbage cans full of water, and they throw buckets of water on you while driving down the street.
  
• People are in front of their houses under umbrellas, w/ their hoses, buckets, and huge garbage cans full of water waiting to throw a bucket on you or spray you clothes.
• Some people put huge blocks of ice in their garbage cans so the water is FREEZING cold (it feels TERRIBLE)
• Water guns in the eye = painful
• People swim in the disgusting river/mote water (it's brown and dirty and just smelly)
• People use water from the disgusting river/mote
• You will walk in water....in the street. It's flooded.
• Never use the flooded water on the ground to refill your bucket -- Thais don't like it...
• Wear clothes you don't care about getting dirty and stained for the rest of your life
• They attack foreigners
  
• Some water is dyed....watch out
  
• Some people will throw this coconut water on you and it hardens...icky.
• You will smell gross for the whole entire week...as well as your room since your clothes are drying in there
• Don't go out till it's dark if you don't want to get wet!

Songkran was so much fun -- it seriously felt like Spring Break: Asian Style (meaning, a lot more modest). There was a strip where they closed down the whole street and it was bananas: there were stages left and right full of music and dancing girls, people drinking everywhere (which was gross -- that disgusting water got in their beer cans yet they still drank it), people spraying HUGE hoses of water, more dancing....it was a blast. You couldn't move in the street because it was so crowded.

In another area the streets aren't blocked but basically are...meaning, the traffic doesn't move. It's right by the river/mote thing, and people are just lined up on the sidewalk, all throwing water on you. On the left side, it's just person after person after person w/ their ice cold buckets of dirty river water. On the right side, it's truck after truck after truck throwing water on you. It's gross but so ridiculous and so much fun.

We walked along both of these strips three days in a row. While walking along the river/mote strip we found a Rasta Bar and there we got buckets and listened to live music...seriously, I cannot emphasize how much fun I had...

Songkran was definitely one of the greatest experiences I have ever had. After 5 days of water, though, I did kind of start to get sick of it. I miss it now, though, because it's so incredibly hot here. But yeah, if you ever decide to go to Thailand, go in April, during Songkran, you don't want to miss it :]


Pictures of Songkran I stole from my friend Justin: