Songkran, the water festival

I was exhausted after spending 4 days diving and following it with 2 days of intense climbing. All I wanted to do is chill and relax, which is the complete opposite of what I did in Bangkok. Songkran is Thailand's new year celebration, which last for 3 days. Being a water festival, the streets of Bangkok is converted into a war zone of water and water guns. Everywhere you go, there bound to have somebody (or a group of people) waiting at a corner with a bucket of ice cold water in their hand, ready to splash it an innocent bystander. However, this isn't just a random water fight, there is a significance to everything. According to the Thai people, splashing water on somebody during the songkran symbolizes purification as the water will 'wash away' the bad things of the previous year. People will also put chalk on your face as a way to express happy new year to you.

Being loyal to couchsurfing, there was a group of Singaporians who organized the songkran celebration in Bangkok. As a lazy slob as I am, I found out before hand that one of the guys had an empty room with 2 other free beds, so I jumped on the opportunity and grabbed the room. To my big surprise, nobody from the room (except for Jason who arrived on the last night as he missed his train down to bangkok) checked in, which left me with a very expensive room for myself (but it had AIR CON! I WAS HAPPY!). I met up with the organizer Ummar, and a few of his friends. Later that evening, the rest of the batallion arrived at the roof top where we all introduced ourselves. The usual suspects (germans) were present but to my big surprise, 3 french canadians where also present! The quebec connection has once again been formed! From that evening on, all the couchsurfers quickly got united and will be connected forever.

What started as an innocent water fight quickly degenerated into a massive war zone as if I was in the streets of Kabul. It is not safe to walk the streets unarmed (with a water gun) or alone. We had to look behind our back for sneak attack from kids with waterguns or wait to regroup as a group of people we waiting with their bucket. It was a real battlefield. During the day, we wondered on Khao San road, which is the backpacker's road where all the tourists and backpackers roamed the streets drunk out of their ass with waterguns. Music was pumping, water was being spashed. It was like a big street water party. The water was actually quite refreshing making us forget the intense heat of Thailand. At night, we ventured to the more local venues like Silom street and RCA (the clubbing district). I have never seen that many people in my entire life in one small venue or street. There could have easily been over a million Thai, as soaked and wet as everybody. RCA was the craziest experience of my life where we (group of 30 couchsurfers) were almost trampled to death and squeezed like a can of sardine. I had the best time of my life, but it really drained the life out of me. Songkran has been unfortunately added to the Murtaugh list.

On day 3 of songkran, everybody was tired of being wet and splashed on. The heat got to us (even the singaporians couldn't handle the heat anymore). Nobody wanted to leave the hostel anymore as we were afraid to get wet or die of heat exhaustion. I was running on 3 hours of sleep, exhausted and wanting to go straight to Japan, but I unfortunately, still had 5 more days to kill, the last stretch of my Thailand trip. I went up to Chiang Mai with an overnight sleeper train leaving all the amazing friends who I met in the past few days. We might have gone our seperate ways, but songkran will always keep us connected.