holy s--- songkran!!!

It is so hot here. It is a steamy Thai summer, & the sun beats down relentlessly for 12 hours of the day, melting concrete & makeup & brains without mercy. My bedroom has no aircon, so I lie awake for at least an hour each night after going to bed, unable to sleep even with an electric fan pointed 2 inches from my face blowing hot air, & I wake up uncomfortably drenched in sweat as soon as the sun peeks its head out over the horizon once again. I take 3 showers a day. It is unbelievably hot.

The Buddhist New Year celebration of Songkran coincides with this most sweaty season, when the sun enters into a new position in the zodiac. The word Songkran is derived from Sanskrit & means passage into a new phase. Sacred Buddha images are washed & water is symbolically tossed on one another as a sign of blessings & cleansing for a prosperous year ahead. It's a good way to cool down in this heat. But Chiang Mai takes the festivities to a whole other level, & the city erupts into full-blown water warfare. No exaggeration either. For FOUR WHOLE DAYS it is absolutely impossible to stay dry, as the moment you leave the confines of the house, you’re pelted with water guns, hoses & buckets-full of water. The square-shaped moat is the center of all the action & becomes a throbbing mess of slippery bodies, flooded streets & pure pandemonium. Pails attached on strings are lowered into the moat & subsequently emptied onto a victim’s head or the passing motorists. On the street, open tuktuks & pick-up trucks filled with revelers & huge drums of water speed by & blast everyone in their path with water canons. And if you’re really lucky, you might just end up in the moat, as my roommate did when she went to refill her bucket & a (now former) friend shoved her in. Shudder. And I hated the ice water! Cold then hot then cold again. No one & nothing is safe, & you have to shield your most delicate belongings (i.e. mobiles, cameras) in quadruple-wrapped plastic bags or leave them at home altogether, lest they get damaged. I can only wonder how many mobiles have been destroyed, skin rashes have broken out, and shoes have been lost in the moat over the course of the festivities.

It’s a welcome respite from the heat, & the first day I was fully into it, but by day 2 I was hiding indoors & begging for mercy. How could this possibly go on for 4 days??! You can’t get anything done. There’s no greater feeling of dread than when you’re walking down the street alone, still shivering from ice water attacks & there is a group of 20 boys on the sidewalk, waiting with evil grins & water hoses, ready to ambush you. And you have to good-naturedly take each & every water attack, bow your head & thank your assailant for the “blessing,” even thought he nearly ruined your $400 digital camera with a bucket-full of parasite-infested murky moat water. Yaaargghhh.

These are the best pictures I managed to take, since every time I took out my camera from its plastic fortress I was risking its life. I looked like a drowned rat. But so did everyone else. The gay boys were especially sexy in their see-through & skimpy t-shirts. I worked with them one of the days of the festival handing out wet condoms & dancing on the streets. The only straight boy in the pic, the guy next to me, is a local celebrity apparently, but I have no idea who he is. I think his name is Tek?

When not working I was out at one of the millions of parades or outdoor parties going on, or my favorite bar, which had transformed into a soaked & sloshed wonderland. I’ve never seen anything like it in my life.

I just realized that I’ve been able to participate in at least 3 New Year celebrations in the past 4 months. It’s like starting over & over again, & a reminder to keep a brighter perspective each time. It’s turning out to be a very good year.