Whatever Songkran originally represented and no matter how it was celebrated in the old days, the objective is to get everybody within reach completely soaking wet.

Whether this is mostly the fault of the Thais or hordes of visiting drunken falang is anybodys guess. I've read that the whole idea of Songkran was to sprinkle a little water on someone to wish them luck for the new year and/or to dab your victim with a moist brown paste that is composed of whatever. But the holiday goes on for a whole week long. Banks, law offices, and real estate sales offices close down in the middle of the week because the people who work there know that nothing's going to get done anyway.

Close to five hundred people get killed during the holiday, many of them on motorbikes whose drivers have lost control over their machines right after getting deluged with water. Traffic on all of the major streets comes for a screeching halt as guerrilla warfare ensues. The streets are all lined with pedestrians armed with buckets of water and gigantic squirt guns. And all along the sides of the streets are 55 gallon drums (I really dont know how much these really hold but after seeing enough 55 gallon drums back on the farm I'd say this is as close a guess as any) filled with water which people use to recharge their weapons. The whole thing is totally insane. This year there's been a drought with all the reservoirs supplying Pattaya with water about to go dry. And here the streets are running with water as if an entire swamp has been drained on top of all the concrete.

There are pickups roaming about the streets filled with young guys and gals looking like Vietcong insurgents shooting large squirt guns of water at the passengers sitting in neighboring pickup trucks and the pedestrians out along all the streets who are at the same time trying to get everybody wet in the passing pickup trucks. But it's all moving so slowly like a news reel in slow motion because none of the traffic is getting anywhere very fast as the vehicles just inch down the streets. The last day is the worse.

And for this I had decided to stay up in my room at Sky-Top after having stocked up on lots of Thai food that I could microwave. The beer would come from the Internet café downstairs, and I had lots of good books and magazines to read in the room. A pretty girl had been giving me fully nude oil massages every other day. She called around 11 in the morning asking me if I'd join her over on Soi 8. The girl rarely got any time off, but I had been out with her a few hours on two different nights. She worked six days a week in the afternoons and evenings and went to school to be a hairdresser in the mornings. But I told her, I Think I want to go out today to get wet? I have been getting wet all week long and I'm not as much as going out of this room.

Later, I thought better of it, and tried to call her but she mentioned not taking her cell phone with her because she was afraid it would get wet and ruined. Just two days before I had tried to make the 15 % down payment on the condo I had just bought. I had gone to the law office, then the bank across the street where I had opened an account. A girl working for the Thai lawyer I had hired, Ponthep, had gone with me to the bank to help me get the cashier's check. To get it I had to have my passport with me for identification. We got it all done and I soon found a motorbike and driver not far from the law office.

Take me to Naklua, Soi 16, I told the driver. "Fifty baht." I wanted to make sure that he understood that I knew what the going price was.

But this driver didn't know exactly where we were going. I was used to taking the motorbike taxis to the condo that were just a few doors down from Skytop. Those guys all knew where I was going and even if one didn't, there was a woman working there at the corner bar who would explain to them where to go. She also knew as did many of the drivers where the law office was. But this time I was miles from Skytop and even further from the condos. The driver of the motorbike headed in the right direction but when we got within several miles of the condos it immediately became clear to me that he didn't know where he was going.

We wound up on a street that immediately became a nightmare of congested vehicles going nowhere fast. But a motorbike piloted by a driver who knows what he is doing will go against the flow of traffic, drive along sidewalks and curves, and do everything possible to go around the unflow of stopped traffic. But all along this street were hundreds of people all armed with squirt guns and buckets of water. And some of them were running out into the street to squirt the drivers and other occupants of stalled vehicles.

I had a small bag with my passport, the cashiers check and other important documents that resembled a gym bag. It was not waterproof. I carried this in my left hand as I sat on the motorbike behind the driver. Right after we entered this street both the driver and I got bucket fulls of water right in our faces. Some of it got all over the bag, which would soon get saturated and begin soaking my passport and documents.

Several times the driver would stop the motorbike to ask somebody out in the street for directions. Usually no one would try to get us wet while he was asking for directions although a couple of times someone would walk over to the bike to smear some of that brown paste on my face.

But we got it royally and more than several times before we got to the condo. I had the driver park next to the sales office where I immediately noticed a large chain that had been used to lock the gate. And then I saw the sign that had said closed on it.

All for nothing. The cashier's check inside my bag had gotten wet although not quite wet enough to ruin it. Not quite being the operable words here because it had been a close call.

And still another time on another day, PlOne, and his Thai girlfriend AE and I had gotten on a baht bus to head for the boat pier where we would take a short cruise on a yellow submarine. The baht bus driver had taken Beach Road all the way there, which is something PlOne had told AE that we didn't want to do, since we did not want to get wet. He had told her to have the driver take us via the less trafficked 3rd road or some other road, but somehow something got lost in the translation.

People lined the streets who tried to get all of us wet. At one point I lay down on my back on the pickup bed of the baht bus hoping no one could see me until the baht bus was well past them. So I managed to get only about half as wet as PlOne. But I could have killed the drunken falang who spied us in the baht bus and came up running after it with a 2 gallon bucket of water in his hands. The moron came right up behind the baht bus and jumped right in practically on top of my prostate form where he unloaded on me. But I kicked out at him which spoiled his aim so he got only part of the contents of his bucket on me.

Fucking idiot. This wasnt his holiday. It was for the Thais. But if he wanted to have fun and play along a little whos to blame him. But for him to chase down his fellow falang who were obviously going somewhere and not there to enjoy the water sports, especially on one of these early days of the festival was in my book just an excuse to be an asshole without getting killed or beaten up over it. It was early afternoon and the guy was already as drunk as a skunk so what does that tell us about him? At the same time one could hardly blame the little Thai kids squirting at people from the sidelines with their squirt guns. They were just little kids doing the Thai holiday thing. But this Falang was out to get people around him completely and miserably soaked heedless of the discomfort he was causing in his mindless out of control confused state one can only call a big juicy brain fart.

So by the time the last day had arrived for Songkran I was in no mood to go out or to put up with getting wet again, especially at the hands of a bunch of drunken brain dead falang. But after a couple of hours the prospect of celebrating this last day of the holiday had started to grow on me.

One I had gone downstairs from my room and peered out one of the Sky-Top doors into what was going on just outside on the sidewalk and the street. I had just taken some video footage from the roof above Sky-Top. So I opened the door in order to catch some of the sounds as well as the sights outside. One of the guys working next door for the Tourist Police, now in his street clothes, saw me start to open the door, smiled at me, and started to pull me outside so that somebody could get me wet. That did it. I jerked backwards, smiled back at the man and immediately headed back up into my room.

There I put on a pair of swimming trunks and grabbed a towel. Just outside the Skytop doors sat two of the three girls who gave massages for Pete's massage end of the Sky-Top business and close to them stood a couple members of the Tourist police. But they had all been joined by many othersmen and women, perhaps fifteen in all just within thirty feet of Sky-Tops entrance. I approached any and all with the bath towel draped across my shoulders, and then I removed the towel as I held it at arms length while baring my naked chest and saying; "Okay, let me have it. Who wants to be the first?

Well, somebody got me but I don't remember who. One of the massage girls then helped me with my video camera which I had already put in a plastic bag to keep it dry. She then found another plastic bag which she put it in. I was now ready for anything.......Yep....just give me a beer, then another, and do your worse, people. Get me wet. I'm ready for you now. I'm ready for anything.

I had a beer at the little bar just outside Skytop with the massage girls, then headed down 2nd Road towards Soi Eight in search for the girl who always gave me massages. In a way I felt guilty for never getting massages from the Sky-Top girls who were always pleasant enough with me. But I had started getting my laundry done around the corner. There was a massage place right in there with the laundry and it is there I found Dr. Loom who spoke better English than most. I admired in a way Dr. Loom;s work ethic for everyday she was in school taking hair dresser classes at 8 a.m. Then by three she'd be back at the massage place looking for customers so she could get her bills paid. She'd work there until 11 at night which meant that she'd either been to school or worked for fifteen hours straight for six days a week. And still she had managed to find the time to go out with me a couple of times. So I felt my money had been going to a good cause. The only thing is there had probably not been anything wrong with the other causes too. Several times I had come in early and just had two or three beers while I talked with the Sky-Top massage girls who had never asked anything out of me.


Absolute Carnage and mayhem was ruling down at Soi 8 and I imagine it was just as bad just two hundred yards over on Soi 7. One side of the narrow street would be trying to get the entire other side wet. Soi 8 has tons of bars on both sides of the street, most of which being beer bars, are open to the side facing the street. Bar girls who knew the bar girls across the street were going after their rivals with a vengeance. Compounding it all were the falangs most of whom each had his favorite bar girl who he would naturally take sides with. So on both sides of the street were ample numbers of people both male and female doing their utmost to get those working the bars on the other side of the street thoroughly soaked.

I first took a seat on one of the bar stools at Foxy Lady, which had become one of my favorite beer bars. Why? Because I had met Som there on my first trip to Pattaya over a year ago. And I still continue to see Som now and then to this present day, who I like very much. And there had always been other pretty girls at Foxy Lady and well, what more can I say, I'm just kind of used to it. And here I had a Heineken or two where I could stay relatively dry while watching and videoing everybody going berserk just a few feet from me.

But I had promised myself to try out some other bars on Soi 8. Besides I still had some hopes of catching my little massage girl who I had still not caught a glimpse of. So I went up the street to what appeared to be an Irish bar.

Inside there was no hope of remaining dry. Even the bar stools were soaked. And these nutty Englishmen all in their fifties or sixties were running about the place getting each other and the bar girls who worked there completely soaked.

Some of the girls were dancing seductively. Keeping my video camera still in the plastic I started shooting more video. Several times while watching this video you will notice the plastic which I was holding tightly against the lense in order to eliminate as much distortion as possible is getting hit with droplets of water. So imagine me shooting video when one of the bar girls who I had never met comes over and starts to pull down my swim trunks. She's trying to depants me as I shoot the video but I've got the swim trunks draw string tied up tight so she can't manage to slide the trunks off my hips. Yet, still she tries as I continue shooting the video trying to ignore her.

There are several good looking gals here. Soaked all the way through their clothes have drawn up around their bodies clinging tightly while showing off every curve. But the music is terrible here. The owner who is English comes up to me to introduce himself. He's friendly enough but the music is so ghastly that the only way it could be worse is for them to start playing bag pipes. In fact, I think for awhile they were playing bag pipe music. One thing for sure...those picking out the music to play were certainly not the Thai bar girls, who surely would have had much better taste than this. This bar although fun was not the Foxy Lady which usually played music that I liked.

I decided to go over to Soi 7. But on the cross street separating Soi 7 from Soi 8 I met the girl I would wind up bar fining and spending the night with. But that's the subject of another story. In retrospect, all that I can say is next year if everything goes according to plan I'll be staying at the condo where I can stay as dry as I want or even visit the beach or Five Star hotel next door and pretty much avoid Songkran. But I think I will take it in fully on the last day just as I have today. It's a great time to meet lots of girls and other people. As a holiday for all its faults it completely trashes our New Years in the wild and fun department.

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