Saturday, the first official day of the Songkran New year celebrations and we were guaranteed carnage! The origins of this so called 'water festival' have much more calm and traditional roots. It was originally about people offering their respects to Buddha and their elders then washing the buddhas with water to cleanse themselves from sins. In present day Thailand however this has now turned into one massive water fight with Bangkok and Chiang Mai being the epicentres!

Our first experience of this was leaving the hostel and having a bucket of water thrown over me by the the owners. No matter how covert you are you will get wet and she had been waiting all morning to get me! Obviously you have to make sure you keep any valuables water tight or keep at the hostel... luckily I had thought of this and everything was in plastic bags. Walking down the streets to Bangkok centre things appeared quite calm ...the only action seen was us being ambushed by kids with water guns and buckets just after leaving the hostel. They also smear you with a paste consisting of talcum powder and water. This is meant to expel sins for the past year then is washed off by the water.

In the city centre the streets were lined with people soaked and armed with super soakers. The amount of stalls selling water pistols, buckets, pumps and hoses was staggering. It is literally a crazy party atmosphere. After a drenching we dived into the safety of the shopping centre to find some food... Although now safe we were also freezing as we were surrounded by air con!

We returned to a food court we had visited on our last visit and enjoyed a noodle soup and fried rice before taking a look around the shops. Later I thought I would treat Lou to a cup of tea and a cake as she was a little blue.. Homesick I think. We stopped at a small coffee shop and ordered an iced cappuccino (for me) and an earl grey (with real fresh milk) for Lou... We then shared a slice of warm chocolate cake with squirts cream. This did the trick and she was soon smiling again.

We were dreading having to get our bags to the metro station to reach the airport and so decided to make the dash for the airport sooner rather then later. We headed back to the hostel where again the buckets of water were tipped over us! It was actually quite refreshing considering the intense heat of the day!

It all seemed quite quiet until we reached the hostel and the guests and local kids were ready and waiting for us. We got soaked by buckets before eventually finding safe haven in the hostel. We loaded ourselves up and were prepared to make the dash to the metro station. Kindly, the local kids saw we had our bags and didn't soak us which we were both quite relieved at. We caught our train to the airport and relaxed on the 30 minute ride which would take us all the way to our destination.

The airport was busy when we arrived but luckily there was no queue at our check in... probably because we were four hours early. The lady booked us on the flight ..giving us the emergency exit seats so we could have more leg room, before explaining that we could use the domestic lounge prior to take off and that we would get fed on the flight, amazing news.... Bangkok airway -1, Air Asia -0. Soon enough our bags were all heading off through the labyrinth of conveyor belts while we made for the Bangkok airways lounge.

On arriving we were pretty chuffed... It was amazing, free wifi, free hot and cold drinks and even food. Which included cakes, popcorn, pastries and sandwiches. With five hours to kill I obviously took advantage of this and ate far too much! Laura kept commenting on how it wasn't an all you can eat buffet lol. You can get used to the airline lounge thing far too easily. With the wifi and food, time went very quickly and it wasn't long before we were called for boarding. The flight was full but remained spacious and relaxing... we were very impressed, especially when they gave Laura a blanket o use... poor thing was freezing. The flight was only one hour in duration which meant as soon as you were up you were coming back down again and yet they fed us.... We were pretty full from the lounge but hey it's free food and we are backpacker. The meal was nice though and we were pretty content.

We touched down in Chiang Mai at around 9:45pm and as I suspected the taxi ranks were charging double fare due to festival time. After a little debate we teamed up with solo female traveller who we later found out was a nurse from Australia. We agreed to share a taxi with her to her place then we would walk the short distance from there. Laura and the girl got talking about work and Laura was flabbergasted to find out the girl had been qualified less than her and earned approximately £50,000. Pretty scary!! They exchanged details and once we stopped I noticed this backpacker area was full of bars! Walking towards our hostel area there were bars with girls outside everywhere. Like being in Khao San Road again!! We eventually found our guesthouse with a little help from a pleasant bar owner and we both said we would pop there later for a drink!

We checked into our room, eventually after the owner, who seemed pretty drunk and didn't know what day of the week it was finally found the key and worked out the bill. The room was a twin, en suite, a reasonable size and a fan to help cool us. We dropped off our stuff and headed straight to the bar we had passed... this area in the old city seemed quite calm with the usual expat crowd and cheap beer! We ordered a beer which quickly turned into a few as it always does! I started playing pool with the local crowd and showed off some of my pool hustling skills. The gin and rum got cracked out and we both knew it could be a costly mistake in the morning.

We were joined later by a young Northern Irish couple who were staying in the guesthouse adjoined to the bar. The girl, called Sarah Jane, was a nurse specialising in cardiology currently in a hospital in Belfast. Obviously it wouldn't take long for the conversation to get onto the nursing. Her boyfriend, who we ashamed to say, can't remember his name for love nor money, had the thickest northern Irish accent I've ever heard. Literally, most of the time I had no idea what the hell he was saying. On top of the accent, the speed of how he talked was like automatic machine gun fire. It got to the point where you had to nod, 'hmm' or gamble on a 'yes' or 'no' response hoping to picked the right one (50/50 chance)! Occasionally you did make sense of things but as he drank it became even more incomprehensible, he was hilarious though... you've got to love the Irish!

Laura was playing counsellor again, first to the bar maid who had a child at 14. She was struggling with her 23 year old Canadian boyfriend who didn't want to grow up yet. Secondly, there was an expat called Philip, whose daughter still refuses to talk to him because he moved to Thailand and married a thai girl. She still won't talk to him even though this was 16 years ago, all quite sad really!! Laura gave the simplistic advice of "get in touch" saying that if he persevered she would listen... Adding that she should be glad her Dad cares that much.

By the time we had finished it was 3:30am and we both agreed that bed was needed. We had been told the water festival would be crazy tomorrow so some sleep would be required!