After washing off what we thought was a hell of a lot of paste we venturtered outside our hotel again with the intention of exploring the area. Turned out that attemtping to do anything normal or get anywhere was pretty much impossible! The whole district was at a stand still with roads cut off from cars, taxis and even tuk tuk drivers dared not enter our street. We didnt have a choice in the matter we were going to get absolutely soaked! As two teenage white girls we were of course a prime target and within 5 mins not one spot of us was dry or not covered in paste!! You couldnt move for people, water guns and paste! The new year - songkran lasted over 4 days, each one standing for something different. The water is meant to wash away all bad things from the past year to prepare you for a fresh one and the white paste - water mixed with talcombe powder is meant to ward off evil spirits and bad luck. Traditonally a small splash of water and a dab of paste is meant to be put on ur cheek but now its super soakers, hose pipes and buckets coupled with hundreds of people wiping paste all over you!! The next day we got up and out of the hotel early before the water warfare started and jumped in a tuk tuk ( best invention ever that resembles a motorbike with a sofa stuck on the back!) and headed for the grand palace. The palace was absolutely huge and very very pretty, just absolutely boiling hot!! Saw lots of pretty temples and the Emerelad Buddah. We had to clear out before one to make way for the king - who they all adore here, he's painted on every building and up in every shop! Then headed for Wat Pho, another huge and very pretty temple just down the road. Here we saw the "reclinging Buddah", a big fat gold buddah lying on its side - was like 200 meters long! From here we jumped on another tuk tuk and headed for china town for a wander and a butchers at the golden buddah although we wern't sure if we were going to actually get there as this tuk tuk was even more like an off track roller coaster than the other one! We managed to find the temple with the buddah in ok and took about 20 photos each only to walk round the corner and find the actual golden buddah - about 3 times the size with a huge crowd around it! Hoping we didnt accidentally visit a fake grand palace or anything as well! You never know where these tuk tuk drivers might take you! After a good day of sight seeing we headed back to our hotel - thinking it was going to be simple but noooo! Not only was it hard enough to find a driver daring enough to take us back through the water madness but the one we managed to persuade chucked us out smack bang in the middle of it! Thankfully a nice teenage tuk tuk driver jumped off his tuk tuk and walked with us through the crowds to show us where our hotel was!  Both of us slightly stressed and sweltering were now completely covered in water and paste again!! Had some tea at the hotel as we were to scared to go outside as the celebrations continued then met our intrepid tour group.  First impressions were oh crap as they had all done a tour together before this one and were all at least a few years older than us, but in the end generally a really nice group. There was the new zealanders - first came across as the most talkative, non- stop joke telling couple but then took a liking to poking and pinging rubber bands at us! Then the two swiss guys - one couldn't speak much english and the other was a comedy genious without actually realising it himself and hugely resembled where's wally! Then the canadians - aside from the slightly irritating accent and one of thems cackling high pitched laugh they weren't that bad. Really nice dutch girl who was only 2 years older than us and an english guy who had done the oz experience so we picked up a few tips from him. Our group leader who i think was called something like Barr in thai!! was very nice but kept mysteriously dissappearing throughout the tour. Next morning it was up early (again!) for our train to Sukothai.