We're All a Little Songkrazy

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. 

The Current Has Us Now

Blogging from the road proves difficult. My brain is constantly overloaded by an influx of stimuli and I'd rather not hole up in a dingy guest house typing away like GlitchCOM5, but playing catch-up is also a drag, so I time traveled to the land of pen and paper and chronicled my journey in a notebook, careful not to miss a beat. So for the next few posts, I will choose my favorite incidents and memories from the trip and update a blog daily. (Probably more like every two days, considering I managed to contract Bubonic Plague on my journey and one of my eyes is swelled to Asian status. fitting, really.) I guess I'll start two days after Wat-ing around Chiang Mai rolling down Pai River two deep in a tube made for one, deflated tube in one hand, beer and lone sandal in the other, legitimately concerned over the prospect of heading into Burmese territory.

After arriving in the beautiful hippie haven tucked between soaring hills, we decided to take a 'relaxing' tubing trip down the Pai river. A weasley whiskered Thai man with a brow ring and wife beater plops us and our tubes onto a random riverbank, takes our clothing and instructs us that if our tube is to pop, find a non-english-speaking local and ask to use their cell phone to call him. Mind you locals on the side of this particularly unpopulated river are fishing and farming and probably haven’t excelled in understanding the flailing hand gestures of the Farang.

The warning lodges a seed of paranoia into my psyche, knowing that with regard to unlikely happenings, I'm the exception. If it can be popped, broken, shredded, drowned or shattered, surely my fingers (or elbows, toes, bony knees, etc) will be the culprits. But I drink my way out of second guesses and elevate. Our tubes putz down the ankle deep excuse for a river, streaming over rock-shaped speed bumps, winding between farmland and mountains blanketed in foliage whose branches all seem to be ominously pointing in the direction we're headed. The lack of current leaves my tube plodding in the wake of the herd and Jamie and I find ourselves reliably banked on some portion of this inhospitable quarry.

The woodland creature in the white tank warned us that in some shallow areas incisive masses could potentially leave our bums scraped and tubes deflated, failing to reveal that these spots were actually the entire river and because it’s about a foot deep, they perform as obstacles in a jewel heist, beating the leisure out of our rears, spines and phalanges. Soon enough, the flow deficit meets swirls of torrents and I struggle to hold onto two bottles of Chang and my shoes while hip thrusting to avoid taking a cliff to an area deemed exit only. Jamie and I continue to pull up the rear and I'm in the middle of bruising my knuckle in a philanthropic attempt to open a fellow tuber’s beer for her by lighter, when suddenly I'm at a standstill a large branch and I merge forming one inanimate being, sending the riverflow curving around us on all sides.

I stand up avoiding razor sharp cliff rocks and realize that my once-inflated doughnut now hangs around my neck like a defeated boa constrictor. Suddenly the current wrenches me away from my branch and I struggle to hold onto the two beers, sacrificing my sandals and lifeless tube in the process, I'm propelled along in six inches of water, ricocheting off rubble like a giraffe-shaped gumball. A bewildered Thai fishermen retrieves my sandal from his net while his friend peels my comatose rubber tu-tu off a slab of stone. 

Between diagramming how to best carry all of the necessities (beers) without surrendering the soles of my feet to the callousness of geology, I'm again torn from footing and into the current. I'm dragged along the rocks, hopping from stone to stone like their own human boomerang. Jamie attempts to paddle toward me holding out her altruistic, albeit undersized arm for my rescue. I turn in the direction of safety, battling against the current and shouting "I JUST WANT TO LIVE."

In retrospect, this exclamation seems a bit dramatic considering at any point I could've ditched the goods, stood up in the rocky 2 foot deep water and gracelessly marched my unhappy ass up the bank onto someone's farm and somehow communicated that I needed a ride back to town. Rather than risking the awkwardness of that wet, scantily clad conversation, I opted to doggie paddle through River Bedrock and hoisted my body, my beers and my encumbering flat floatation device into Jamie’s tube, leaving a two pink sandals and my dignity to the devices of the river.

We float the rest of the way two-deep in a historically non-durable tube made for one, hip-thrusting in unison to avoid creating two holes in our asses. Cutting our losses, we continue sipping our cheap beers and take each rocky blow in stride, even when we legitimately believed the group had shored hours ago and we were en route to Burmese territory—also a warning from our uber helpful guide. An hour later, we spot the faces of our friends, but not before a group of unnecessarily angry young Thai lads attempt to flip our tube and drown us with their vicious little talons. Luckily my long legs and Jamie’s shrill shrieks were enough to fend them off until we reached safety. Thailand needs to peruse the tourism section of leisure maybe once more, especially considering I was made to pay 100 baht for deflating my tube. 

Vermin Villa

Gingy Kitty about to eat a member of the roach graveyard.

I’ve complained countless times about cockroach infestations and continually claim to be stalked by roaches. I asserted my disgust of this particular insect breed the first time I found one crawling on my face in the middle of the night and since then life has never been the same. Apparently word has gotten out in the Thai roach community that I am particularly revolted and irritated by the existence and presence of their kind, so they’ve staged a coup on my place of residence. A day when I’ve had to chase down and kill three roaches is considered a damn good day in my present life abroad.

The first time you see a mongoloid jungle roach soaring through your living room, it’s like Mother Nature junk-punching you for all those times you couldn’t find a garbage can. You want to scream OKAY ENOUGH ALREADY, I’LL STOP USING STYROFOAM AND ONLY EAT KALE. And the first time a thumb-sized cockroach manages to contort the notches of its exoskeleton to squeeze through a dime-sized hole in our drain while you’re washing some dishes, entire organ systems begin to tremble. There is something about the sight of a cockroach that elicits both your gag reflex and internal hatred for all dirt dwellers. My home is not a sewer. I clean up after myself and use the appropriate amount of caution when opening doors and windows, and yet my home is apparently the safe haven for every roach on the island spreading dysentery all over this biatch.

As Lindsay recounts her run-in with three massive guys in her bedroom, I look around the kitchen to find a companion scurrying under the fridge, one crawling up the wall and two blocking the entrance to where my sheets hang drying. The type of infestation that makes you wonder what sorcerer in the roach community you so deeply offended to warrant this type of plague.

Back in the land of logic, you have 10 cockroaches in your home at one time one of two things happens a) you burn down your home and collect insurance on the vomitous insect clause or 2) a bearded man in a yellow VW bug with ears and a tail comes to your home and flea bombs the entire joint until you’re breathing toxic yellow gas for all eternity. But I do not currently reside in America, nor do I know the number of a pest company. What I do have is a hiking shoe and a knack for crushing these crunchy cats before they become airborne.

And while we’re on the cat subject, we’ve got another vermin visitor that frequents my abode. A satanic orange cat has taken keen to leaving daily piss puddles on our motorbikes. The first few incidents seemed harmless enough, until ginger kitty began pissing on the seat to my bike. Now I must hose it off before I leave anywhere. And after the hosing is done and the appropriate amount of swearing has occurred, I sit on my bike to leave only to have satan feline hop on the seat with me like we’re going on a joy ride to Petsmart. EFF YOU CAT. I’m 98% sure this cat is the reincarnation of all the ginger souls I’ve tortured over the years. And a look into my future of breeding my own angry ginger kids. The universe is quite the jokester. 

Our house has a separate indoor-outdoor hallway and the door is just bars, wide enough for a cheeky cat to sneak between, which is just what this soulless feline did before he/she/ladyboycat decided to take a wittle kitty poo and then smear it all over the tile, walls, etc. So between scrubbing cat excrement, scraping roach guts off the walls and the harmonious sound of the rabid soi dog chorus that holds practice every morning upon sunrise, the animal kingdom of Choktip Villa has us now.