After Soppong I spent a couple of nights in Pai. It's
a pretty cool place but similar to Vang Vieng in that
it seems to have more tourists than locals.
Here's the email I sent home when I got back to Chiang Mai:
So I'm back in Chiang Mai for a couple of days to celebrate the
Songkran Festival with various friends here. This basically consists
of country-wide water fight, that lasts about a week. It actually
started while I was still in Soppong and Pai.
The four-hour bus ride from Pai yesterday was miserable, because it
was baking hot outside, but we had to keep all the windows of the bus
closed since people kept throwing buckets of water at us.
It didn't
help much, since if you get the angle right most of the water
will go up the loose window seals and spray everyone inside anyways.
When I showed up at Nat's Guesthouse last night, Jane shrieked and
came running over with outstreched arms. I thought she was coming to
give me a hug, but she just wanted to take my backpack off before
everyone there took turns pouring a bucket of water over my head.
There's roughly one ambush point per city block, where a group of
people stand around a barrel full of water with high-pressure squirt
guns and buckets drenching everyone who goes past. Often these people
hide in the recess of a store, so you have to look for patches of road
that have a conspicuos abundance of puddles. Then you cross to the
opposite side of the road and wait for some cars to go by and draw
their fire while you hurry past.
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The moat
You start to get very paranoid. That old lady watering her plants?
She'll turn the hose on you if you get too close. Those monks hanging
out by that wall? They're holding alms bowls full of water behind
their robes.
If I haven't been drenched by around midday, that's
usually when I decide to go for a walk. It's the peak of the hot
season right now and that water feels pretty good most of the time.
But even then I'm always a little jumpy when I hear the sound of a
truck coming up the road behind me. Roving water-gangs drive around
with a barrel of water in the back of a pickup truck and about every
third one is using ice-water that'll take your breath away.
Scott
