(‘happy new year’ in Thai), which made it very difficult to be annoyed about it. Everyone also helped each other refill when they ran out of water. The final day of Songkran was the most fun, and I spent it in a pick-up truck with about 12 other people from the Muay Thai gym I’d been training at. But before that, I’d bought myself a new phone, so I was determined not to let that one get wet. One of the guys from the gym had given me an ingenious idea of tying it up inside a condom. It was brilliant. It kept it dry, and meant that I could still take it out and use it without worrying about getting it wet. However, it did make me look stupid, and plenty of people had a good laugh at me. We loaded the truck up with garbage pales of water, ice, buckets and guns, and drove to Lamphun (a neighbouring province). This was very different to Thapae because we were the only foreigners we saw on the trip. The locals would all shout ‘ferang!’ (‘foreigners’) when they saw us, and were more determined to get us wet. Traffic was extremely slow moving because the roads were filled with other people doing the same as us, and our driver would deliberately slow down when we passed


36 THE WORLD TRAVEL MAGAZINE


people with water hoses or buckets (which happened every 5 seconds!). The whole journey was non-stop madness, and every place we passed was blasting out different Thai music. It was great fun, but the dirty water definitely didn’t do my eyes any good, and I was convinced that I was going to get sick one way or another as a result of it. By the time we stopped for lunch, we were desperate to get out of the war zone, and needed a break. We stopped at a nice little place hidden in some trees and ate some noodles in the sunshine while we dried out a bit. Not that there was much point, because we would get drenched again on the way back.


I ended Songkran with a massive night out, as it also happened to be my friends last weekend in Chiang Mai. It was an emotional but fun night, and the perfect end to almost a week of non-stop partying. I was still feeling the effects of it for a while afterwards, and even a week later I was still pulling damp notes out of my wallet. I’ll never forget my first Songkran experience, and am now convinced that the Thai New Year is the greatest holiday EVER.


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