Right now, Thailand is ludicrously hot. It's normally above 40 degrees somewhere in the country at this stage of the calender and Bangkok is never far from the point at which human blood will boil at even the briefest, most tokenistic episode of physical exertion. Happily, the Thais have come up with a stunningly apt remedy to the strain laid on at the hottest part of the year. During Songkran, the traditional Thai new year which runs from the invariably sweltering 13-15 of April, the fun-loving population is given three days off work and an epic three-day water/chalk fight commences.
I've been to Thailand on holiday a number of times, but I'd always managed to miss out on the event through a lack of knowledge of both what it entailed and how significant a celebration it actually is. I had to return home for a family funeral the week before this year's festival so it had largely slipped from mind until I realised that my return flight would bring me back to Bangkok, the hub of the celebration, at 2.30 on the last day of the event.
The city I found on my return bore no resemblance to the one I left. For a start, all the drivers congregating around the taxi rank outside Bangkok's new pristine Survarnabhumi Airport were soaking wet and half of their normally spotless cars looked like they'd been dredged up from the muddy end of the Liffey. I had a nightmare of a trip from Dublin which involved an eight hour stop-over in Zurich, the most boring of boring airports, followed by a 10-hour flight wedged beside the ever-present overweight seat hogger, but I was like a kid on Christmas Eve as the taxi negotiated the oddly empty highways that led towards my central Bangkok home.
The fate that awaited me became apparent as the taxi stopped at a traffic light just before the turn onto my street. A group of about twenty Thais armed with every piece of water-fighting apparatus imaginable were congregating at the corner waiting for the lights to go red and once they did, the mob sprang into action. A rickety old bus meant my taxi and it's apparently highly-prized cargo was partially hidden from the band of water warriors, but their efforts were clearly visible. They descended on the bus like Apaches on a covered wagon, the windows of which some passengers had foolishly neglected to close, and opened fire with their battery of water guns. Next, a second wave moved in, each carrying small plastic bowls which I later found out contained a gloopy mixture of water and light brown chalk dust. They then preceded to decorate the bus to the point where it looked like it had been set upon by a band of drunken neolithic cave painters.
Out of nowhere, a young Thai, looking exceptionally pleased with himself, came charging towards the bus dragging the spluttering end of a garden hose behind him. To my amazement, the commuters seemed to take the complete soaking they received through the partially open windows at the hands of the hose-bearer in good humour.
My pasty foreign head was spotted seconds before the lights turned green, but it was more than enough time for the marauding Thais to leave our hitherto clean taxi looking like a painter's radio.
My street was banked on both sides by thousands of people dancing, singing, drinking, and drenching each other with muddy water while stunningly cheerful Thai pop music blared from windows and shop-fronts. I'd heard Songran called 'a celebration of life'. At the time I considered it to be a heroically gimpy description but that was exactly the term that sprang to mind at the sight of Sukhumvit soi 22. I almost shared my thoughts with my bemused taxi driver. I must have been seriously jet-lagged to have been thinking such rubbish.
When we pulled up outside my apartment I was forced to sprint towards my room at full tilt with my suitcase on my shoulder as the water and chalk mud rained down from a fresh group of Thais who fixed me in their sights. However, once inside, all I wanted to do was get back out again and shortly afterwards, that was what I did. What followed was an evening on the tiles that will in parts be both impossible to forget and impossible to remember.
