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Bedraggled
It is being reported that Bangkok is in turmoil, with fierce clashes between red-shirt protesters and police leaving scores injured. A state of emergency has been declared there and perhaps it should be extended to Phuket. The place is in chaos with all manner of weaponry openly on display and being used at will on the streets.
We thought we had gained an understanding of Songkran, or the water festival to celebrate the Thai New Year, and maybe we had, but only intellectually. What we could not comprehend was the extent to which the revelry is irrepressible and refuge impossible. But we were to learn.
The shops in Patong were mostly closed, even the markets, and people of all ages thronged the streets armed with everything imaginable to dispense water; the tourists with plastic water-cannons and the locals with heavy artillery. This was no symbolic light sprinkling with water, it was mayhem. Utility wagons and motorcycles constantly circled the streets with passengers armed to the gunnels ensuring no-one went unscathed. Groups of people on the back of utes pumped water from barrels onto anyone they could, other locals perched high on fences and walls used them as vantage points to get maximum effect with hoses. Our shuttle was an easy target and came under heavy fire.
Unarmed and already soaked, we initially sought shelter with our new friends at the Kiwi bar to watch the fun. Thai children with buckets of water ambushed bar patrons, there was retaliation and it all escalated from that. The cruel, and there were plenty of them, used iced-water.
If we arrived soaked, we left sodden and must have looked a sight. Our faces white with powder, another of the rituals, clothes wet though, Kaelene’s hair flat on her head and jandals squeaking as we walked. What a sight. Marty put his money in a back pocket for protection, fearing that ink bleaching from wet notes would render them of even less value than they already were. Such was the drenching, however, that nothing escaped and the money has been laundered.
There wasn’t a dry eye in the house, as the saying goes, and even at the restaurant people were in various states of undress. That’s not a pretty sight, especially the big ox at the next table with home-made West Ham tattoos all over his semi-naked body.
They say that thousands of dollars worth of electronic equipment gets ruined during the festival each year, the property of unprepared and defenseless tourists wandering into town. As for us, we were just relieved to have made the decision to leave the camera at home and not try to record the festivities. It would have been hopeless.