Day 62 - Friday, April 15 - Siem Reap to Bangkok

Kah picked me up at 9AM and took me to the airport. I boarded my litte prop plane back to Bangkok and got a taxi when I landed back to Shanti.

Something I haven't talked about yet is SONGKRAN. Songkran is THE THAI NEW YEAR and it's going on right now. Depending on where you are in Thailand will determine how many days it's celebrated. In Chiang Mai, they celebrate for a week. Here in Bangkok, they celebrate for 3 days.

Songkran is a Thai word which means "move" or "change place" as it is the day when the sun changes its position in the zodiac. It is also known as the "Water Festival" as people believe that water will wash away bad luck.

The Songkran tradition is recognized as a valuable custom for the Thai community, society and religions. The value for family is to provide the opportunity for family members to gather in order to express their respects to the elders by pouring scented water onto the hands of their parents and grandparents and to present them gifts including making merits to dedicate the result to their ancestors. The elders in return wish the youngsters good luck and prosperity.


Now, as you can probably tell, that is the literal meaning of what the holiday means. HOWEVER, it's not really about POURING WATER ON THE HANDS OF YOUR ELDERS at all as it's really a GIANT WATER FIGHT ALL OVER THE STREETS of every city and town in Thailand.

Everyone is fair game including policemen. Basically, if you are out on the streets, you better make sure you don't have anything on you that can be ruined as you will be soaked head to toe in water within 3 seconds! All businesses and government offices are closed and people drive around in trucks with giant water guns and buckets of water throwing it all over the place. Usually, the back of pick-up trucks are loaded with people and giant outdoor garbage pails filled with water and the people in the back of the trucks take their indivivdual pails of water and throw it everywhere and on anyone driving by or standing in the street. Then on the strret corners, you have kids standing with their guns or pails of water waiting for the cars to drive by so they can do the same. You have never seen anything like this before. I've attached a link below that has some pictures from last year on Khao San Road in Bangkok.

http://www.2bangkok.com/2bangkok/songkran/index2004.shtml

I got back to Shanti and it was mayhem. I managed to get inside without getting wet as I was ready to celebrate but wanted to put my packs down and change so I was in proper attire.

Well, I went out on the street and sure enough withing seconds I had kids squirting me with their guns and in only a matter of minutes, I had a pail of water thrown over my head and from that point on, it was war! The girls from Shanti were out on the streets enjoying themselves and enjoying getting all the farangs soaked. NOBODY IS SPARED! There were 80 year old women throwing water and getting in on the action! There is no safe place in the entire city (COUNTRY) unless you are inside closed doors and Shanti doesn't have any doors. It opens right up to the street and there was water all over the place in the restaurant area.

A few hours later, I came inside, dried off, and starting chatting with a few various groups of people who had all had enough as they have been here for the whole time and wanted life to return to normal as they had shopping to do before boarding their flights back to their home countries. It's difficult to shop if you aren't buying waterproof merchandise.

I had dinner with Mike Levy, a NY Jew who now lives in Clairmont, California, and his 2 friends Ellis and Rick. Ellis is in a band and is playing at the Hard Rock in LA on April 28th.....anyone interested? Albert?

I then went over and talked with Omar and Steph from Australia and we made plans to go to the Weekend Market in the AM. I hung out in Shanti's internet shop for a while as it seemed that a party had begun to form there.

It wasn't until just after 1AM that I retired to room #4, the same room I had the first time I was here back in February.