One of the highlights of my whole world trip was while I was traveling around the world was Songkran (Thai New Year). Songkran is when the Thai people celebrate their New Year. The New Year festival is from April 12-15, and is not the typical new year's party that you are used too. I personally don't think that anybody in Thailand works for 3 or 4 days. The Thai people and tourist celebrate Songkran by having a huge water fight for 4 days in every city throughout the whole country. The most famous spot in Thailand for Songkran is Chiang Mai (located in Northern Thailand).
It is hard to describe in words what it is like in Chiang Mai during Songkran. It made m
e feel like I was a little kid playing with squirt guns. This small city is basically transformed into one big party! There is a huge wall and moat that surrounds the old part of the city on all four sides. On the inside of the walls, the locals have squirt guns and buckets of water outside of the their houses They wait outside their house to drench innocent victims. They drench tourists, tuk tuks, and mopeds that are driving/walking by. They will not discriminate against getting you wet if you have nothing in your hands or if you are carrying your travel backpack!
On the outside of the old city walls there is a moat that goes all the way around the walls. People line up and down the streets around the moat. The moat is the main source of the water for this festival. The city supposidely cleans the water before the festival, but I have heard stories that people get really sick, because they end up drinking some of the water when they get water thrown on them. Be careful not to drink the water when it is thrown on you!
People line up and down the streets around the moat. The two main streets outside of the wall where people will be having huge water fights is: Chalyapoom Road (right outside of the Thapae Gate) and Maneenopperat Road (by Chang Puek Gate). These streets are packed all day with tuk tuk's, trucks, bicycles, and people riding mopeds. The traffic goes really slow, and this makes the people in these vehicles easy targets to hit with buckets of water or with your squirt gun!
On one side of these main streets, people throw their buckets into the moat to get water, and then throw that water on the other people that are passing by. On the other side of the street, there are restaurants and bars that have huge buckets filled with blocks of ice and water. Even though it is about 95 degrees during the festival, this water is so cold that people always scream when they are hit with the water.
On April 10, I had no plans of going to Thailand for Songkran. I was traveling through Laos with about 6 other travelers that I had met on the "slow boat." (I had already traveled through T
hailand and most of Laos at this point in time) I was in Vientiane, Laos, and I was planning on taking a bus into Vietnam in 2 days. One of my friend's, Howard, was talking about how he was going to go back to Thailand for Songkran. He said it was supposed to be so fun and that is was a party we didn't want to miss. I didn't really want to back track into Thailand, but after thinking about it for 5 minutes I decided I probably wouldn't have a chance to go back to Chiang Mai for a couple of more years. So we headed to a local travel agency that night, and booked a flight the next morning for Chiang Mai, Thailand.
Howard and I arrived in Chiang Mai (after a lay over in Bangkok) around 2pm the next day. We took a taxi from the airport straight to the Julie's Guesthouse (the best place to stay in Chiang Mai). While driving, we saw people already in the streets starting to use their squirt guns. Luckily Julie's had room for us to stay there. They don't take reservations, but some reason they said they had reservations for people coming up from Bangkok. It always works out!
After we checked into Julie's, we were just hanging out in the open area in the front, and out of nowhere came cold cold cold water. Coco, the manager had filled up buckets full of ice and had a hose that he used to drench everybody. I knew it was on after that. I had one big problem though...I had no bucket or squirt gun. So Howard and I walked out to the Thapae Gate (which is not far from the guesthouse), and there were vendors selling all kinds of different water fighting "weapons." I ended up buying a bucket and a squirt gun. Some people were buying these hi-tech squirt guns with a backpack you can fill up with water with a hose attached to it. It was comedy.
For the next three days I basically did the same thing. I would eat breakfast at Julie's (the food is so good), put on my swim shorts and wife beater, and head to the streets from like 11:30am to 7:30pm. I also wore my sunglasses, because people squirt your eyes all the time and if you wear contacts its a nightmare. I ended up going to the same spot each day. I would go to Lucky's bar. I made it my home base, and most of the people from Julie's Guesthouse would do their water fighting here too. In this general area, the bars had music blasting all day, and we 
serving drinks to people too. It was too much fun!
The water fights end when the sun starts to go down. The cops come onto the street and make sure people stop water fighting. It gets pretty cold when the sun goes down, because you are so wet. So it ends up being a good idea to head back to dry off.
One of the three days of the water fights, the staff at Julie's Guesthouse got a pickup truck to drive around the streets. They filled two huge containers with ice blocks and cold water. I was able to join in on the fun and jump into the back. It was basically a war between us (the people in the back of the truck) and the people on the street.
By the 4th day I couldn't physically throw water on anybody any more. I almost had no desire to get back on the streets. I was so tired from the previous three days! It probably didn't help that I was out late every night too. Songkran is a festival that you do not want to miss. Make sure you plan your trip to Southeast Asia around this festival!
