The Songkran festival in Thailand is one of the craziest nation-wide festivals one can experience. It is a several day long water fight, during which most Thais have a break from school or work and spend their time hosing down neighbors and strangers alike. It is the Thai New Year’s celebration, which luckily coincides with the hottest time of year in Thailand. A long time ago some very wise people decided that the hottest time of year should mean “no work and go have a water fight instead”. Fun-lovers across the world took notice of this festival, so now locals and foreigners flock to the cities for water fights, thousands of participants strong. I don’t just mean a silly water balloon fight where you end up with wet socks. Firetrucks will literally connect their hoses to the water main and spray crowds of sweaty street partiers. My friends and I stayed in Bangkok for the three(ish) day festival. Popular opinion is that Chiang Mai (a big city in northern Thailand) and Bangkok are the cities with the biggest celebrations.
Songkran hooligans
It is essential to have a water weapon before heading out into the streets. Nobody, not elders, children, or women wearing fancy makeup, is safe from the barrage of water in the streets. My friends and I witnessed a tuk-tuk (open aired, three wheeled taxi popular in Thailand) stopped by a man holding up his hands in the middle of the street. When the tuk-tuk stopped 10 children surrounded the vehicle and blasted the passengers with hoses, water guns, and buckets for a soggy 45 seconds. The buckets and hoses soak people down to the bone. Any possession not concealed in a waterproof bag is ruined by the buckets and hoses.
My friends and I joined the throngs of water gun carriers. Water guns were the most common weapon, even though they wet your opponents the least. However, their accuracy can annoy the hell out of your targets. Aim for people’s eyes, while avoiding getting a stream of water in your own and you feel like a regular Dennis the Menace. I should add that the water being blasted in every festival participant’s face was of questionable cleanliness. The canals of Bangkok are notoriously filthy, and I wouldn’t be surprised if some of that fly-ridden slop ended up being sold as ammo on the streets for 5 baht per liter. The Thais also have a tradition of rubbing clay on their faces, due to some other poorly explained tradition. So, I ran around Khao San road shooting stinky water into strangers’ faces, while they assaulted my own. I had buckets and hoses of said water drench me every minute or so, and had to deal with every other mud- caked Thai person smearing clay in my face and saying “Thank you”. A bit different than average summer holidays back in the US, though I can see the facial mud maybe catching on at music festivals.
We generally enjoyed ourselves that afternoon, not caring how wet and muddy we were. After a few hours we returned to my friend Conor’s apartment to eat dinner, discuss that night’s water fighting strategy, and of course get a good whiskey buzz before returning to the battle. (Honestly, did you think we were doing all of this while sober?) An entire day of water fighting in the sun left a few in our group exhausted and cranky from swollen sinuses. No doubt from the typhoid water we had all playfully shot into each other’s mouths. So during the fist night of Songkran three guys plus myself headed out in Silom for some night fights.
Earlier in the day I had been warned that the “lady-boys” and other deviant types get frisky when night falls. I could expect to receive a lot of unwanted “grabs and tugs” according to my Thai friend. I was already covered in mud, had spent 8 hours soaking wet, and had just downed some whiskey, so the prospect of a few surprise ass grabs didn’t worry me. I was mistaken.
The scene we came across in Silom at night was as if a gay bar in Las Vegas had been flooded, but after having 5 tons of mud poured on the street. Drunken partiers were running around in their underwear, covered in clay and dancing to techno. At least that’s how my friends described it to me. Earlier I had removed my contact lenses since they had become tinted grey with clay and stung my eyes. I tried my previously used tactic of firing in people’s face to disable them, but without contacts or glasses I can’t make out details further than five feet in front of me. I didn’t know if I was successfully annoying my target by stinging their eyes with brown water, or just tickling their ears with a pitiful stream. Most likely was the former outcome, because within minutes I was under attack from other party-goers, and had lost my friends. At that point I adopted a new strategy for water fighting. I would jump into a group of people, shout “SONGKRAN” and start spinning in a circle while firing my gun at face level. It worked, and so I continued to run the streets blind, searching for my friends while soaking most groups I passed
Even though I was causing people to laugh/ run away, I wasn’t even being the most ridiculous person on the street. That title went to the ladyboys, who were looking for drunks the way vultures look for slow moving animals. The lady boys sauntered the street, soggy and muddy, and fondled people at random. Not just a pinch on the butt cheek, but a full five fingers wrapped around the genitals. Over the bumping techno music and shouts from the crowd, you could occasionally hear when a ladyboy had caught a target. Someone would shout “EEEEK!” or “YOWZAH!” and you knew a quick crotch clutch had occurred. Since I was roaming the street blind, I couldn’t see when a ladyboy would approach to make me his target. I would be spraying down a group, and then suddenly feel a stray hand working its way up my thigh. Of course I immediately would aim my water gun at the ladyboy to fend him off, but a few did successfully feel me up that night. A quick squeeze followed by a devious smile. Whatever, all part of the experience.
Luckily my friends found me after 20 minutes of solo fighting, and we set out to start winning some water fights. If you can say we had a strategy, it went as follows; I would run forward, do my SONGKRAN circle, Ben and Conor would surround the group and attack with their more powerful and accurate water guns, and our friend Bank would chose one target in the group to dump his bucket over. We were an unstoppable force that night, breaking up groups and generally causing chaos.
As our night came to an end, we agreed to find one more target to drench before calling it a night. Ben spotted an out of shape looking man standing by himself scanning the crowd. Naturally, we took him for an easy target so I ran up to him yelling “SONGKRAN” as the start to our attack. Perhaps it was because I wasn’t wearing contacts and couldn’t scan my surroundings well, or perhaps because our target was an extremely deceptive man, but we ran straight into an ambush. Our “out of shape” looking man summoned 10 guys with super soakers to surround us and essentially power-wash our heads. The four of us couldn’t even use our guns since we were too busy shielding our faces. We had walked right into this man’s trap and he was punishing us big time. I wasn’t able to open my eyes to get a look at his face, but I imagine him laughing hysterically at the 4 idiot flies that ran headfirst into his spider web. There was nothing to do but cover our faces and wait for our assailants to run out of water.
The icing on the cake came during the last 10 seconds of my team’s water assault. Somehow, in the commotion of the attack, a ladyboy walked right up to me and gave me strong yank. Like a train conductor tugging on the airhorn before rolling through town, this molester gave a firm grip and two strong pulls without a hint of modesty. In fact, the ladyboy yanked so hard that I was noticeably sore the next day. After our attack was over, we had to laugh. We spent a few hours aggravating other groups, so it was only right that our night ended in defeat.
I absolutely suggest all people visiting Thailand to try to plan their trips during the Songkran festival. Although I advise the use of goggles and a protective cup.
The Journey of Andrew Cassidy 