We’re pretty dumb. Our clever little scheme to escape Vietnam by retreating to safe, familiar Thailand has totally backfired, as we forgot about a little thing called Songkran.
Songkran is the Thai New Year, and is characterised by:
- everyone travelling everywhere at the same time (i.e. no transport or hotels)
- everyone throwing buckets of ice water over everyone else, especially tourists
It’s the Water Festival, and everyone partakes, which would normally be fine. But apparently the Festival has been somewhat hijacked in recent years by drunken foreigners who are out to create as much mayhem and many wet t-shirts as possible. This means unrepentant gropings, general pandemonium, and not a few deaths from traffic accidents, caused by stupid people dumping ice water on passing motorbikes, causing the drivers to swerve into buildings or oncoming traffic. Only in this part of the world would you have to plan around something like this. Our options now are to hole up in our hotel room (if we can find one), escape the city (if we can find a bus), or escape the country (Nazma’s looking up flights right now). If you don’t mind separatists and possible bombings, the Muslim south apparently is a safe haven. Mind you, Giant Water Fight still beats Boring Commute To Work. Some people come to Thailand especially for this, and we wouldn’t mind joining in the festivities (it’s mid-to-upper 30’s in most of Thailand). The worry is having to sleep on the soggy streets for want of a hotel, and injury after being drenched for the millionth time by some stupid falang on a passing flatbed. Keep your fingers crossed.
