Funny
This is my happiest Songkran ever. I love every minute of it.
This is because I am in Malaysia. In Malaysia there is no Songkran. I am dry. I can can walk the streets without getting wet. There are no pick-up trucks crusing the sois, looking for the rare human who is outside. Nobody has water guns, high-pressure fire hoses or buckets with water and ice cubes.
Pizza home delivery is not doing a roaring trade in Malaysia. Video rentals are not up dramatically here. Nobody are sneaking down to the 7-Eleven after dark, looking and listening if the coast if clear before getting some supplies and hurrying home again.
Locals don’t drive (with their car doors locked) to the shopping centres to spend all day indoors. Flights out of the country were not fully booked weeks ahead by anyone with the means to escape.
Television in Malaysia doesn’t show scenes from Chiang Mai or Khao San road, where farang girls in wet t-shirts are held as examples of Western decadence corrupting the morally upright Thais.
Ah, there is so much I miss by not being in Thailand this week.
Want to see what it looks like? Here is the Flickr photo collection from Songkran >>
Tags: Songkran, Thailand
April 15th, 2008 at 3:35 pm
There are pockets of Malaysians of thai origin celebrating songkran, but are mainly confined to temple grounds and community halls, and they do make themselves wet! I’ve seen reports about their activities in the newspaper as well as TV. However you’re unlikely to meet them in Bukit Bintang.
April 16th, 2008 at 8:37 am
I don’t understand why anyone who appreciates younger guys would run away from Songkran. Tuesday at 5pm there were 500,000 people on Silom Road, many more than ever before, and 90% of them were 18yo guys. Fire trucks were hosing the crowd from Convent Soi. The road was like one long continuous “goal!” at a World Cup final. The faces I saw, the boys who rubbed my face and shook my hand,… My fourth Songkran and I loved it.
April 17th, 2008 at 11:25 pm
I’m with you SF went to Penang not a drop of water wasted, the plane was full in both directions. I remained dry, well except for some alcohol. But I did read in The Star newspaper that the Malaysian authorities want to make more of the ‘water festival’ next year. yeaaak get me out of there.
April 19th, 2008 at 10:23 am
Hanoi was lovely too, the only water was the ice in my drink and the big lake I was sitting next to.
April 20th, 2008 at 6:31 am
It is fun. Once. Did it in CM years ago. A blast. Now I escape. This year I went to a hidden beach in Chantaburi Province. Turn right at Km 302 then about 30 km south. Only one other farang. He had left sanity years ago, and was drowning in a bottle of whisky. I decided that if he approached me, I would talk only in Spanish. Fortunately, he did come by. The beach was immaculate. The Thais great. They only threw water on you if you were in the back of a pickup with your own supply of ammo. (55 gallon durms of water). I was there five days. Not a splash. I walked by two little girls aged 3 and 4 and they were about to get me with a couple of heavy dudy waterguns. I bent down, offered each a side of my face and my hands and they put the guns down and gracefully dabed a bit of talc paste on my cheeks.
Unfortunately, the young and very handsom man I brought down was busy doning family stufff visiting wats and such. We were going to stay out of Pattaya for a week. After 4 days he called and asked if we could go back “tomorrow”? “Ok,” I said. Long enough with tranquility, back to hectic.