Fire/Water‏- Wed 4/15/09

Dear Y'all,

Don't you just love it when you are checking your e-mail and a pair of elephants trundle by?

I rolled into Bangkok, one of my favorite cities in the world, Monday at 5am. I hadn't been here for 6 years but I found my way through empty streets I remembered well, as though caught in a dream where the people had been removed but everything was just the way I had left it. I found the same guesthouse. I was put in the room next to the room I had stayed in. It was all a bit eerie.

Within a few hours, the streets were packed with people celebrating the New Year. It should be noted that this is a water holiday and across Laos and Thailand and possibly other countries as well, people arm themselves with water guns and buckets and spend the next three days soaking anyone who comes within range. Also, they distribute clay packets and it is considered good luck to have a few dozen total strangers spread slop across your face and clothing. (Come to think of it, I wonder how clean that water is?)

It is fantastic fun provided you give up any notion of staying even remotely dry. You just follow the press of people and try to give as good as you get. Too cheap to spring for the super-soaker, I rigged a series of large water bottles into a makeshift water-cannon by strategically punching the caps with the bamboo spit from a hastily devoured chicken kabob. Nobody suspects the innocent looking tourist carrying a water bottle of having a concealed arsenal of ice-cold heavy artillery.

So that's the fun part. Across town, anti-government riots are reaching a fever pitch. Protestors have been killed and hundreds wounded. Buses have been set on fire and the police are switching from rubber bullets to live rounds. While we play around with plastic pistols and mud, distant automatic gunfire is being drowned out by the dance music from all the outdoor speakers.

I could be getting a little too old for this, or it could be undiagnosed attention deficit disorder, but three days of non-stop booze-fueled, water-soaked, muddy partying is a bit too much for me. Well, now that I think about it, three days straight doing nearly anything is usually too much for me. I explored the first day, basically hid the second, and tonight I'm planning to throw on a bathing suit and get rowdy. Still, with the specter of violence in the background I thought it would be wiser not to overstay my welcome so I'm leaving earlier for New Zealand.

Hugs,
Alex