All About Kaler and Lena: Trip To Thailand

4/13, Wed. – Songkran (Thai: สงกรานต์) Day 1 – Water Fights, Night Market.

The next day we loaded up in the back of a pickup and headed for the central canal/moat in town for water fights. As we were leaving Joy’s house it began to rain. In the morning it was around 78 degrees. The combination of rain, 78 degree weather and riding in the back of a truck at around 40 mph, we all got cold on the way into town. When we got into town, the massive waterfights slowed down traffic to a crawl, which meant that we had a chance to warm up.

In the back of the truck were me and two German couples, a German speaking Swiss couple, and two children from the orphanage, one that was deaf. Natty and Kaler sat in the cab with a photographer, driver and three other orphans. We had a large bucket (20 gallon) in the back of the truck with water to refill our water guns, and throw buckets. The two German couples didn’t bring anything to water fight with. Many merchants lined the sides of the streets selling blocks of ice to put into the large buckets of water. Getting hit with ice cold water when it’s 80 degrees out has a very obvious effect. The rules of the water fight are pretty simple. 1. Get other people wet. 2. Get yourself wet. 3. Try to not get people wet that don’t want to get wet (sometimes hard to follow). 4. Don’t take anything with you that you don’t want wet. Some people line the sides of the street and throw or spray water at people passing by. People in the backs of trucks throw or spray water at other trucks and at people along the streets. Once the people in trucks run out of water in their large buckets/barrels they stop by the canal and refill. This water fight goes on for the three days of Songkran from 8am to 6pm roughly. It also goes on elsewhere around the city/county in lesser intensiveness.

Later in the evening, after drying off, we went back into town to the Night Market. This is a series of open air markets selling clothing, food, arts, crafts, etc. Natty and Guy shopped for long sleeve shirts and pants for us as we were planning on going to stay on the Children’s Shelter farm in the mountains side.

Getting ready for the water fights in downtown Chiang Mai.