Thaila-beck: on Songkram
Current mood: good

Hey its the 15th!!!! only 5 days between my last post. how good am i!?!?

Well i shall now as promised tell you a bit about songkram. its pretty mental really. so the gist of songkram is that its tied in with the new year. traditionally its the time to do a big "spring clean" and a time where kids go to their grandparents or elders to ask for blessing and have holy water sprinkled on their hands. Also the buddists wash the buddahs. like in christianity where church goers belong to one church so buddists belong to one wat and the members of a wat will go there and clean the buddahs. that is to say all the buddah statues in the wat. another wat centralised activity during songkram is the parade in which each church makes a sort of float with one of their buddahs on and invites people who line the street to throw water on it. this is done as a blessing for the person to wash away the old etc.

so thats the educational bit, 'cos my blog has reithian values. unlike the bbc I educate entertain and inform.

thus far i don't think i have written anything particularly extraordinary, i mean cleaning statues and washing away the old with water is not really mental isit? No But (oooh another parade outside) But what is pretty mental is that everyone covers eachother in water. literally you cannot walk down the street without having a bucket of water thrown over you. i have been got about 4 times today already. twice on the way for breakfast and twice from breakfast to internet. this resulted in me recieving electric shocks from just about anything i touched for the first half hour of my computer useage. its all in good heart though. on the first day of songkram. there are 4 days me and jack went to a bar, bought water guns ands stood there squirting everyone with a massive crowd of people. good fun. also people ride aroung in the back of pickups with 25L drums of water throwing it. this is honestly going on outside the window now. there is a pickup parked outside with a water dr..um in it. I AM GONNA GET BARE WET ON THE WAY OUT OF HERE.

Its all in good spirit. 4 days is a bit much but hey its a laugh and also its not my country nor my new year.

We are stuck in chiang mai 'cos no buses are running 'cos of new year. but tomorrow we get out and go to ko phan yan for the full moon party may even meet up with keiron and peeps. then from there to phuket for some well deserved beachin' it and getting a super hype badass tan. nice.

anywho everyone love to all and take care

xxxxx