The Songkran puppeteer dangles buckets, super soakers, cups,
bowls, bags ensuring not an iota of dryness exists on any human, animal or
inanimate object within the Nation. There lives a majestic hero of all holidays
in hills of Thailand, where it’s completely acceptably to walk up to a complete
stranger and pump a stream of water into the back of their unsuspecting head and
they cannot have you arrested for assault. A national holiday where buckets of
ice water are dumped onto the heads of farang by truckloads of passing Thai
people crowded around a garbage can housing a small glacier radiating more
frigidity than a mail-ordered Russian bride.
After each pot of frost water dumped on your head, you pray
for that follow-up bucket of unusually warm and disgustingly dirty river water
fetched from the moat surrounding the city center. But when you’ve somehow
found yourself on the other end of an icy bucket, some rubber band deep inside
holding together puzzle pieces of sanity and morality snaps and triggers a
feeling of superhuman all-encompassing power combined with a sadistic need to
find the perfect douche bag deserving of a frosty pail to the dome.
This power flows through the veins of human people
transforming them into members of the Songkranian cult whose main principles
are: nowhere is safe, I don’t care if you have a cell phone, I’ll aim for you
not the baby and one in the eye is worth five in the chest. Speaking for myself
of course, I sensed a demon being released during this inexplicably glorious
holiday. A Songkranic Sprite prowling the streets of Chiang Mai, bucket in one
hand, beer in the other and a chronically bursting water gun dangling around my
neck—a twelve year old boy’s ideal notion of jewelry.
We combined Phuket teacher forces to form a Songkran squadron
fit to man gunners and bushwhack camouflaged through dense jungle in hostile
territory. To my fellow comrades and I, this festival was no holiday indeed—it
was full scale, no holds barred conflict zone. We gained position outside a
local clothing shop with a handy bar out front. The women working the shop
brought us homemade necklaces, papaya salad and even permitted our soaking wet
bodies to slog between aisles of expensive looking dresses and use their
toilet.
Quickly, this spot became out territory and turf wars waged
between our shop and the pub next door. I continued to scamper off throughout
the day, back to where I discovered barrels of ice water that a kind Thai man
permitted me to use in exchange for a small fee. The fee being that during the
amount of time it takes me to fill up my gun and bucket, he continuously pours
buckets of icy water on top of my head. Sadistic as that sounds, I understood
his logic and took the painful torture in stride, because everyone knows pain
is progress—especially in Songkran.
A parade pushes through the streets filled with euphoric
Songkranians, high on the authority of water warfare and exquisitely dressed
men and women undergo shots to the face, buckets to the dome, hoses to the
skull and continue marching along like tiny nutcracker soldiers, poised beyond
temper tantrums resulting from lost contacts or temporary water blindness.
The next day, we opted away from our usual spot and took a
quiet back road by our friends’ hotel, where more than ample amounts of dry and
irritable tourists attempted to scurry about undetected. We called ourselves
the Soi Dogs and even pleading and bribery could not save you from our rapid fire.
(Short bursts between friends). We all saw very dark places arise within ourselves,
Heart of Darkness type places that arrive when obsession trumps realism and artillery
of any kind is involved. Especially when the strolling strangers cease walks
and one must succumb to turning on one’s companions.
My favorite (and most painful) Songkran moment occurred when
this particularly dark cavernous fraction inside of my gangly blonde exterior fills
with the excitement of battle and animal instincts took hold. A Thai family
stood ready for contest beneath a tailgate tent. My backup were caught with
empty tanks and refueling their arsenal… I was left to my own devices.
I give my gun a few intensely serious pumps, crouch to assault
position and as an eerie wolf-like howl inadvertently escapes from my lips I
sprint by this family squirting each one in the forehead counting in Thai with
each casualty. “NUNG, SONG, SAAM, SEE…” and as I blast my last trophy and begin
to utter my favorite number (and general Thai word) “HAAAA—“ I quickly turn to
face forward, but I couldn’t reduce velocity in time. WHAAAAAAAAM. Immediately
I run face-first into this pole, practically A Christmas Storying my tongue against the metal.
My fallen enemies explode in laughter as I cut my losses and
realize I’m walking away without a shred of dignity and with a large lesson in
instant Karma. I creep along smiling and cataloguing this moment into the
section housing Karmatic headaches involving squirt guns.
But regardless of dark demons, cold buckets and big
headaches, we blasted, poured, laughed, shouted, danced, chicken-winged, drank
and stomped our way through flooded streets during the greatest holiday known
to man. Sorry Santa, Buddha’s got you on this one.
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