Sunday, April 22, 2012

Songkran and My Birthday!


This past week has been a lot of fun! As a mentioned in my last post the weekend of April  14th was the Thai New Year, which is when a water festival called Songkran takes place. This is a crazy weekend! People get Friday off of work and spend the entire weekend engaged in a city wide water fight. All day people are crowding the street, using hoses, buckets, squirt guns and whatever they can find to get each other wet. One of the biggest soakers is that people gather in pickup trucks and drive around the city with barrels of ice water that they dump on people! It’s hard to explain how out of control this gets, I was not able to step more than 10 steps away from my apartment with out getting drenched. The water fight lasts all weekend and everyone in the entire city comes out for it. Children and parents a like go out and celebrate Songkran!
Songkran!
I went and joined the water festival on Saturday and Sunday and I got drenched! We drove into the epicenter of the water fight, in the middle of the Old City. We took a red taxi to get there and there was tons of traffic. When we would stop, people would come running behind our taxi and dump cold water into where we were sitting! It’s nuts but so much fun (as long as you don’t take any valuables!).
With my water gun!
Having a blast! I'm on the very right!
On Tuesday it was my 21st birthday! I had a great day that included an hour long massage (only $8!). I also went out for dinner and drinks J with my friends to burger place! I hadn’t had Western food since we got here and to have it again was amazing! I can’t describe to you how sick of rice I am! Later that night we set off a wish lantern from our roof for my birthday. They have a huge lantern festival where they set off tons of these in Chiang Mai, but it’s in November.
Happy Birthday to me!
Setting off the lantern!
On Saturday I went to a Chiang Mai Football (soccer) Club match. They have some really dedicated fans and it was a good time, we even won! However now things are starting to slow down and the only things on my calendar are exams!  I can’t say that I will have a particularly exciting last couple weeks in Thailand… I probably will be studying for most of it! So I will end my blog here! Thank you so much for reading and I hope to see you when I return home!

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