Songkran water fights

I can't resist writing a little something about Songkran here in Thailand. It's Thailand's New Year, but they celebrate it in a fairly different way. They decide to have a country wide water fight that lasts for the better part of a week. This may sound so innocent you may wonder how a few hundred people were killed this year like every other year. ( http://enews.mcot.net/view.php?id=3858 )

Well this isn't a normal water fight. It's basically a water fight on the streets. So you have drunken people on the street throwing buckets of ice water at drunken people hanging off of pickup trucks and at motorbikes speeding by. Now make no mistake, I'm not complaining about any of this. It was probably the most fun I've had acting like a 5 year old since I was 5. (Plus I'm pretty sure hundreds of people are killed on motorbikes every week in Thailand anyway).

Since I had a few days off of work I decided to take advantage of it and go to the north of Thailand with some people I met through work. Natalie actually got this set up and then ditched out so I got to go on the road trip with all the Thai women on my own. It was about an 8 hour drive in which I received a tour of the ancient capital of Thailand, some much needed sleep, and many hours of free Thai lessons. The reason we headed to the north was to go to the city of Chaing Mai, the best and craziest place to go to enjoy the Songkran water fights. We also toured a few other cities but the highlight was for a whole day I did nothing but take buckets of water from the canal and throw them at people in pickups. The other great part was wherever we went we kept buckets of water and filled water guns in hand. Nobody ever suspected a van. So when I'd spring open the window to surprise the unsuspecting with a bucket of water in the face they were truly shocked.

Hunting with water in the van

Aftermath of the sneak attack

Songkran 2008 Crew