After my last trip home I arrived back to Bangkok on the final day of the infamous Songkran water festival, during which time Thais tackle soaring temperatures head on by means of a three-day water fight. Chronic jet-lag brought on by my 20-hour trip was set aside and myself along with two fellow Irish ex-pats by the names of John and Chris ventured out. Both were Thai veterans with nearly 10 years built up in the Kingdom between them, and they had braved the mean streets of Bangkok on many a watery Songkran. Someone (other than myself) decided that it would be a good idea to head to a part of the city called Patpong.
The district is known for it's famous night market at which hawkers pass off fake everything. Designer handbags, no-lex watches, made-to-measure Hugo Boss suits and wedding dresses are all openly available. Counterfeiting is something Thais do exceptionally well – the media went wild last year when a knock off version of a Ferrari turned up. Anyway, Patpong is also earning its stripes as the up-and-coming gay capital of the Bangkok, a fact that I was vaguely aware of when I was informed where we were heading.
Armed with an impressive array of water weapons we made it into a taxi without being soaked. After threating our giggling driver at gun-point into being complicit we began leaning out the windows and doing drive-bys on hapless Thais strolling down the side of the road. As we careened towards Patpong we came across a rickety old bus ferrying Thais to their various chosen destinations. Wisely, they had opted to close the windows on the side of the bus facing the footpath in an effort to protect against mobs of people that lay in wait at traffic lights, equipped with enough water to irrigate the Gobi desert, for the opportunity to drench any passengers who come within range. Unwisely, they neglected to close the windows on the side of the bus that faced into the second lane of traffic, and it was a weakness we exploited ruthlessly. The bus driver was very much on our side. He drove alongside us for as long as he could and waved and cheered while we drenched his shrieking passengers.
We eventually had to bid farewell to our driver (by drenching him) when the traffic locked up, and we negotiated the last few minutes of our journey on foot. The streets, and even the motorway heading towards Patpong had been pedestrianised and entirely mobbed with what must have been hundreds of thousands of revelers, all soaking each other and splatting globs of chalk mud onto random strangers. Our slow stroll through the thronged, soggy crowd was occasionally punctuated by politically incorrect pronunciations from Chris.
“I just shot a granny! That granny over there!” he yelled triumphantly as we stopped to grab a few beers.
The whole thing had a post-apocalyptic feel to it – the clay-coloured people singing, dancing, drinking and messing looked like they had crawled out of the ground and taken over someone else's city. The vast majority of bars were closed but drinks were being sold from coolers all over the place.
“I just shot a dog! Legged it he did.”
The amount of drink being consumed made St Patrick's Day look like a Thursday morning AA meeting but the absence of any form of tutting disapproval from joyless complainers meant it was all guilt free. The friendliness Thais are renowned for was more in evidence than ever and grinning strangers blasted us in the face with waterguns before striking up conversations in what little English they had.
“I just shot someone in a wheelchair! No gettin' away!”
We eventually found a spot at the side of one of Patpong's side streets with a decent amount of breathing room and there we stayed for the rest of the evening. Chris would occasionally set off in pursuit of someone with a cigarette in their mouth, screaming, “smokers are jokers!” while trying to extinguish it. No prisoners were taken be they men, women or children. We even set upon a lone policeman who was given the unenviable job of patrolling our anarchic street, although he was being hit from so many angles that it's unlikely that our efforts registered. However, Chris got his comeuppance when a gang of 20-odd gay guys who had been dancing around outside a closed gay bar further up the street charged down the road with pales of icy water and chucked them all over him.
We somehow convinced a taxi driver, later that night, to allow us into his cab in our ludicrously disheveled state and he did the decent thing and took us home. We paid him with soggy bank notes, and stumbled back to our apartments to watch our respective ceilings spin. It was quite something. The Thais had given a masterclass in how to have a good time.
