A Little Bit of Songkran
Songkran is Thai New Year and occurs mid April, and it just so happened that my friends were arriving from the UK for a holiday. The first to arrive was Nikki, but me and Tri had decided to go for a couple of drinks before heading off to the airport and we got absolutely soaked through. Basically Thai New Year is bedlam, everywhere closes for 3 days (10 days in other places such as Pattaya) and everyone tries to soak as many people as possible with water guns, buckets and hoses. In the beginning Thai New Year was a calm ceremony where monks would use water to bless people but, somehow, over the generations it has turned into a massive water fight. There are so many people- Thais, Westerners, young, old, children and adults walking around or in trucks soaking everyone in sight or covering people’s faces in flour. Everyone has fun and takes the soaking in good spirits (can you imagine doing that anywhere else? I think not) but after three days it’s a little too much.
We arrived at the airport, soaking wet, met Nikki at arrivals and got a taxi back to the Khao San Road. As soon as we arrived, Nikki dumped her stuff, got changed and we went back to join in the party. We went to DJ Station, which is a European disco in the Silom area of Bangkok- a gay club with a mix of Thai and foreign party-goers. It is a great place to party, although it gets quite overcrowded at the weekends.
Anyway we girls were having a great time dancing with the guys but we had to go to the airport again, this time to pick up one of my best friends, Hayley. By this time it was around 4am, and as we had to leave at 5.30am we decided it would be better to stay up and go straight to the airport from the bar. I have had better ideas before this point! Anyway we had a few more drinks before leaving, once more, for the airport. When we arrived Hayley was already through immigration and waiting for us. We were absolutely pissed, something that she found quite amusing (well I hope she did). We got back to the hotel and had some much needed sleep ready for another afternoon of Songkran.
Later that day we emerged from the hotel into the throng of people on the Khao San Road- the amount of people that were partying was ridiculous, there was no room to move- so much so that we lost Hayley within 30 minutes of going out. It was actually quite scary because if any one of us had tripped and landed on the floor I am sure that we would have gotten trampled over. In fact we saw a couple of people being carted away on stretchers. Today was much the same as yesterday- it was crazy, getting soaked and caked in flour whilst drinking our way through the day. It was so much fun.
Later we all got dressed up and got a tuk-tuk to go to DJ Station again. To this day I really do not know why we got dressed up AND got a tuk-tuk, in the middle of Songkran, because Silom road was busier and crazier than the Khao San Road and the tuk-tuk dropped us quite a way from the club and we had to walk. On the way we stopped at traffic lights and promptly had a bucket of ice cold water thrown over us- we were absolutely soaked and had to go into a small bar to dry off a bit before going into DJ. We had a great time in there as usual and left at the end and went to bed at 5am.
The next day we went to the Grand Palace and shopping at MBK centre and decided to stay away from any Songkran festivities, so we walked along Silom road but there was still people partying so we walked the other way away from them and found a nice restaurant to have dinner in, followed by a few drinks in an Irish bar until we thought it was safe to return to the Khao San Road (1am being the curfew for Songkran soakings).
