Songkhran Festival

Gift (a girl from my uni) and another girl named Nai picked me up in a jeep around noon yesterday. In the back of the jeep was a a barrel full of water and some buckets. These are for throwing the water onto passerby as well as other cars. It took us over an hour to drive down the main road to the moat that surrounds the center of the city. Normally, it would take about 6 or 7 minutes to walk that distance, but the roads are completely packed. Later on we picked up a few more girls.

We spent the entire day drinking while driving around the city moat throwing water at other vehicles as well as the thousands and thousands of people who line the street. 3 days of insanity. You can't go outside if you don't want to get soaked. Its a lot of fun.

That night I went out to Warm Up, and it was more packed than I had ever seen it before. I only lasted about twenty minutes before I realized how ill I had become and I went home to try and sleep. Of course sleep never came until about 9 in the morning.

Three hours later the girls called me again saying they were picking me up in 20 minutes. That was tough, but this time there was a lot more girls in the jeep and the barrel was smaller to accomodate the extra people. Eight of us again circling the moat, getting hit with freezing cold water (people sell huge bricks of ice on the side of the street for the people in cars to drop in their buckets) one second while being blasted with warm filthy water from the moat the next. At the end of every day I am always quite ill, but its worth it. 17 died in the city last year from traffic accidents. This year's tally is 8 people dead and 59 injured.

I'm still covered in bruises from the day at the waterfall, where I slipped a few times on the moss. Of course, it didn't hurt at the time.