Sawatdee Pee Mai!
A Songkran Haiku
Dirty and Icy,
Water is everywhere.
Bucket to the face.
Ok, so obviously haikus aren't my thing, but I honestly have no idea how to describe the gloriousness of this holiday. April 13th-15th marks the Thai New Year and this country seriously knows how to celebrate. The entire country shuts down and partakes in water fights to the most epic proportions. Chiang Mai is known as the Songkran hotspot so I obviously had to go.
I arrived on Sunday night knowing that the events would definitely begin on Tuesday afternoon, but as of Monday morning, things were getting a little wet and wild. I met up with a few people, found the perfect weapon (a Doraemon gun) and walked around the neighborhood and attacked little children with water. They still owned us. From that moment on, I was in Songkran mode and only stayed dry for 5 minutes max until Friday night.
For 5 days straight, it was a pure water war. People filled the streets, squirting guns in your face, dumping buckets on your head, whipping buckets at your body, and/or spraying you with a hose. Nobody is safe. Truckloads of people (I'm talking 20+ people per vehicle) circled around town with trash barrels full of ICE water and doused you. If you tried to escape the frigid shower, you got attacked on the other side by 1, 2, 3, sometimes 36 buckets of dirty river water, while also succumbing to about 6 other people relentlessly squirting at you with more ice water from guns of all shapes and sizes. IT. WAS. AWESOME.
I have never been so happy. I spent the entire week with a huge grin on my face. It was impossible to not love life. Yeah, there were times at night, when I was dry and warm, hungry for dinner, and wanting more than anything to stay dry (to no avail), but it made everything more exciting. It was like an obstacle course to get from Point A to Point B, trying to avoid buckets to the face. I am still in complete shock that I am not dying of some weird disease after what I put my body through that week. Mai Pen Rai.
To add to the fun of Songkran, I met a really cool, super fun group of people (Little Bird Guesthouse is the best!) that made my experience even better. I basically spent the entire week hanging out with the same group of people, some of whom included CIEE members that I hadn't seen in a while. Between Songkrannin', the people, the food, and the environment, this week goes down as one of the best of my life.
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| Courtesy of Google |
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| Game Face (Photo courtesy of Sarah) |
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| Tuk-tuk attack! |
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| (via Google) |
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| Wet and Wild (Photo via Sarah) |
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