It's true. And I got away with it. Let me explain. See there's this little holday called Songkran and it's the New Year celebration in Thailand and surrounding countries. It's celebrated April 13-15th (ish). Each city has a day that the festival is celebrated and some have multiple days (Bandkok has 3, Chang Mai 5!) As with most holidays, although it started out with religious significance, it has now progressed into a massive fun-fest. In Thailand's case, it's basically a giant water fight! It just so happens to corespond with the hottest months of the year here too so it's quite welcome.

Anyway, we arrived back onto Pi Pi Don island on the 13th and thought we'd maybe get sprinkled by a stray shot or two....boy were we wrong! We were drenched, bags and all--there was NO mercy for carrying bags with electronics in them! Luckily, the tour guides had given us big trashbags to put our bags in so stuff wasn't ruined. And people were not just shooting water guns, they dumped entire BUCKETS of water on you, some filled with ICE! They dumped them from balconies above and right on top of you as you walked by....it was awesome!

We purchased two small water guns and quickly realized we needed more amo so we bought a bigger one. Luckily, people had tubs of water around the city for refilling and we also had an ocean next to us to use. And that's when I shot a policeman. Everyone was shooting everyone else so as we walked by one and I saw that he was already wet, I decided to shoot him too! He laughed when I did it, but when Peter thought about doing it, he quickly put his hand on his REAL gun. Guess he liked me better :)

In addition to water, people walk around smearing a baby-powder mixture that is the consistency of pancake batter. Some was dyed green or red. It was good fun! Okay, it was good fun for awhile. After a few hours, we were ready to be dry for our travel day ahead of us. But, there was no escaping it. As I was putting on dry clothes, literally in the middle of pulling it over my head, a guy dumped a bucket on me. It didn't matter though because we still had to make our way through the streets to the pier and we got soaked during that too.

Plus, the boat turned out to be a super-soaker. All the staff had buckets, guns, and hoses to soak you and all your stuff. We escaped for a bit in the air-con room but it wasn't that nice to be in wet clothes and air con so we wandered back and forth between wet and cold air for a few hours until we reached Phuket.....and then the soaking RELALY began!

See, Pi Pi Island has small, pedestrians roads only, no vehicles, so there's no escaping the narrow alleys full of armed people. Phuket, however, is giant and has wide roads. We had an hour taxi ride to get to our beach area of Patong, and the streets were insane!!!! People were crusing around with HUGE rain-bin style tubs of water in the back of pickup trucks pelting EVERYONE! People on motorbikes were wearing ponchos but they didn't do much to protect them. It was a GIANT water-fight for the entire city!!!! The taxi driver even rolled down his window for people to "pancake-batter" his face.

After we dried off, we set out to meet Peter's friends for the night. The poncho my mom gave me finally came in handy as the soaking went on ALL night! We were really glad we got to experience Songkran, and in two completely different cities, although by the end of the night, I was happy to dry off and stay that way!