Songkran Chapters 4&5: Washout

Surprise surprise, the last two days of Songkran were a hell of a lot like the first three. It was wet, it was dangerous and intense in its exhaustive redundancy.

Yesterday’s low-point was definitely the ladyboy debacle. I was riding in the bed of a pickup truck driven by ‘the judge’ – the owner of my guesthouse. Our barrel of water was nearly empty and I had nothing to combat the drunk ladyboys a few trucks over. Neither car was moving due to the splash-traffic so we were being bombarded with cold water from the she-males. There were about ten of them in or around their pick-up truck. They also had remarkable tits. Thailand apparently does some good plastic surgery and seeing as there was nothing but a thin layer of white t-shirt covering these male-bags it was evident that someone had done a quality job. Anyhow, I snuck over to their truck so I could sneak attack them with their own water. But as soon as I got close to the truck they grabbed me and molested me with their enormous hands, in an iron Muay Thai grip that I couldn’t escape.

They touched me. Repeatedly.

Almost ruined my day, but hakuna mattata, I guess that’s life.
Today, was the stunning conclusion. I was still shell-shocked this morning and it took me a very long time to work up the will to go outside. Simply walking to breakfast is signing a commitment to being wet for the rest of the day. You can’t do things like buy a newspaper because it wouldn’t make it more than 3 seconds before becoming wet-pulp, which means there was nothing to know about the world except that it was a wet wild place.

So, with a friend of mine from the guesthouse, one of the travelers who came in for the week, I finally convinced myself to go out. We walked to the moat and found a beer stand in front of which we stood for a few hours King-of-the-Hilling it, Singha after Singha, spraying the truck loads of party-goers that drove by.

Eventually, towards the end of the day, we decided to go for a tuk-tuk ride and seven of us piled into a three person vehicle. The tuk-tuk, for clarification, is a three wheeled vehicle, basically a converted motorcycle with a bench on the back. Our driver had found a way to make the vehicle bounce like a low-rider on hydraulics, so as we pulled up in front of any bar with sound system, we bounced the fucker and showed off our go-go moves.

And so we said a misty-eyed goodnight to a fantastic week-long party.

Happy New Year Thailand, here’s to 2549 more.