Our overnight train from Bangkok to Chiang Mai
The seats converted to bunks at night
Songkram Festival
The Thais celebrate their new year with 5 straight days of festivities in mid April, called Songkram. With the Red Shirt protests still going on in Bangkok, we didn’t get to see any of the festivities, but were lucky enough to catch the tail end of it once arriving in Chiang Mai.
Songkram is celebrated by throwing water on everyone you see… lots and lots of water!! When we hit the streets of Chiang Mai, we hired a tuk tuk outfitted with a big garbage can filled with water and a couple of buckets. The driver drove us around town, here we exchanged bucket after bucket of water with the locals. For 50 baht we bought a huge block of ice to put in our garbage can of water which elicited a lot more screams than the normal river-temperature water. It was a blast… but eventually, we would retreat to the curbs where it was a little less “in your face” water throwing.
(**lots of great video from this day but will have to wait for better internet to post**)
People lined up along the river (which winds through town) to dunk buckets and fill up squirt guns
Scott in the background about to throw a bucket of water
Retreating…
Jen helping a local girl get into the action
Jen getting to know some of the “lady boys” of Thailand
Your pictures and experiences in Thailand remind me of The Amazing Race. They always wind up in Thailand, where the streets are forever crowded. I can only imagine it was insane during festival time!
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