Soaking at Songkran

We got up late today, eventually leaving the hostel around 11am armed with water pistols and got a tuktuk to Khao San Road. It was the first day of Songkran festival today, which celebrates the Thai New Year, and what was originally gently tipping a small bowl of water over your elderly relatives to symbolise starting afresh and washing away the past year has evolved into an all out water fight. The street was closed to cars and there was hundreds of people with water pistols of all shapes and sizes shooting anyone and everyone. No one was safe. Naturally we joined in. We got an absolutely soaking but it kept us nice and cool in the heat. Several times we had to refill our pistols from huge buckets of water on the side of the road for the small sum of 5 baht. We sussed out that some of the water avilable for refilling was a lot colder than others and used that. We also figured out it was probably best not to start shooting people with more powerful and bigger guns than yourself.

During the water fight a band made up of drums and various trumpets/saxophones/horns came down the street leading to a huge crowd of people dancing and shooting water in the air where they stopped. It was so much fun and such a party atmosphere, it was fabulous.

We stopped for a drink and shared some chips before joining back in as the band came out again. 

At around 4pm we called it a day and headed back to the hostel to change and dry off. We had real trouble finding a tuktuk who knew where we wanted to go, despite having the name of the hostel and the address. Eventually we found one and we made it back.

We showered and changed and around half 6 went out the the square just round the corner that we went to last night.  It was a lot earlier so there was more stalls open. There was a stage and chairs, and a shrine with people praying in the middle section and then food stalls down one side and knick-knacks down the other. I got some dumplings and Lauren got some of the chicken I had yesterday which it turns out was actually pork. We sat down as the side and then some music started on the stage. It was quite mellow and no one seemed to be enjoying it. There was no clapping or dancing or anything. No enthusiasm at all. After a while we got bored as the music wasn't that great and returned to the hostel for the evening.