Asian backpacker

The Thai new year celebration festival, also known as Songkran, was actually the main event I wanted to attend during my 1 year trip. I’ve planned my trips and time just in order to participate in this. And boy was it soooooooooo worth it. The Songkran festival is actually held in multiple other countries during different times. But the idea is the same, the people throw water on eachother in order “cleanse” them for the new year. The tradition started out by people pouring water over Buddha statues and then using this holy water to bless family members and friends. These days people have adopted the water throwing to cooling down eachother as April is one of the hottest months in Thailand and surroundings. Before I start, I must say I haven’t taken many pictures, most of these pictures I collected from people I traveled with and fought with. 🙂 For obvious reasons it was difficult to take pictures, but thinking back about it now, I should have just bought one of those disposible waterproof cameras and just took pictures with that. Oh well…. what remains are the good memories though! The festival lasts from 13th till 15th of april, but the waterfest actually started on 12th already and actually ended on the 16th. I originally planned to do some sightseeing on the 12th but saw the action starting up, so I just decided to skip the touristic option and joined the water battle going on in the streets. We spent a whole afternoon getting soaked and spraying people in the face with water. Seriously, some of these waterguns are actually water cannons, it hurts like hell if you get sprayed square in the face with one. Me and my gang were obvious assholes and aimed for the eyes and ears of course. 🙂

The next day the real Songkran festival started, the whole center of Bangkok (mainly around Khaosan road) was filled with peope with water guns and mud buckets. The mud is smeared on people of good luck apparently. Khaosan road itself was the center of everything, they set up stages with dj booths and vip areas and music was blasting from one bar to another. The mass of people just went crazy at places. It went on till late at night. The atmosphere around the bars was amazing though. I stood with Ana (partner in crime) near one of the VIP places dancing, having fun, spraying kids in the face and got handed free beer by some friendly locals. Good times!

The following day (saturday), we took it easy since it was our 3rd day of Songkran. We didn’t want to join in on the huge waterfest in the center of Bangkok and decided to join a rooftop pool party with free margharita’s. Yes, I am so cheap, but hey it’s free so you’d be stupid NOT to go. Besides I’ve never been to a rooftop bar, let alone a rooftop pool party. The atmosphere here was also amazingly open just like on the streets. The Hot weather combined with the waterfest was so refreshing that everyone was in a constant good mood.

On sunday I decided I had enough of the Songkran festival, I had my fun, my rooftop pool party so I decided to make my way to Laos. I managed to get out of my hostel dry and in the taxi. Oh I forgot to mention, I stayed in the center, where I was surrounded by people with waterpistols. Thankfully I left relatively early and managed to avoid most of the heavy hitters. Don’t worry, I’ll be back in Bangkok, but for now I’m heading to Vientiene Laos first!