Stop the madness!

Lured by the advertisements showing pretty girls in traditional costumes playfully splashing farang guys with tiny bowls of water, I traveled to the northern city of Chiang Mai for the week long Thai new years holiday. The reality of Songkran is different.

Chiang Mai is a nice little city, smaller and laid back, and not in your face like Bangkok. The old city, where I am staying, is surrounded by the remains of a medieval wall, and a moat, which gives the city a huge amount of character. There are even mountains. And, unlike Bangkok's every man for himself mentality, Chiang Mai has a close nit farang community. I can see why everybody wants to live here.

Songkran officially started on Tuesday, and ends on Thursday, but things were in full swing on Monday. Half the city lined up around the moat, splashing water from buckets and water cannons at passersby. The other half of the city cruised around in pickups with huge buckets of water, and splashed the people on the street.

You tend to get soaked when you're on foot, so we were lucky enough to have the opportunity to cruise around in a pick up with three hot Thai chicks. Unfortunately, they were the most up tight and stuck up people I ever met, so it was not as fun as it could have been.

New Years parade

One day of this is fun, two is excessive, and three is annoying. And it goes on for five. Every time I go out I have to carefully wrap up my wallet and put a condom on my phone. Taking the camera would be pure folly, so it stays at home, unfortunately. Adding to the annoyance is that many people put huge blocks of ice in their buckets. It feels good to be drenched with water straight from the moat, but it's painful to be drenched with ice water.

But Songkran has a dark side. Every day the Bangkok Post lists the running death toll. Like any holiday, there are many drunk people driving. This is bad in itself, but combining this with your average Thai's driving skills is especially deadly. Most of the accidents involve the ubiquitous motorbikes. Splashing the driver of a bike overloaded with a family of five in the face with a bucket of ice water can't help things.