In which Songkram comes early...

Though Easter passes unnoticed here in Thailand, we have a four-day weekend of our own coming up: Songkram, the Thai New Year's festival. In Chiang Mai, girdled as the city is by a kilometres-long moat, Songkram takes the form of a massive four-day water fight. All civility and reserve are quickly jettisoned and the entire city transmogrifies into a vast arena of dueling buckets, hoses, water balloons and super soakers. It will be unphotographeable - you'll have to rely on my terrified first-person retellings. During Songkram, there's no stigma against soaking the defenseless or the unaware, and those in moving vehicles are considered particularly luscious targets. Songkram will begin next Friday, and the drenched buffoonery will continue through the following Sunday.

At least that's the official schedule. As I enjoyed a pleasant open-air tuk-tuk ride across the river to a friend's confirmation party, a random shorts-wearing farang appeared from nowhere took sociopathic aim at me with a water cannon the size of a bazooka. One impeccably precise burst left me drenched as I passed by, unarmed and anyways too stunned to retaliate. Thankfully, I had to stop and pick up new shirts en route anyway (yay for having a personal tailor!). It may seem obnoxious and malicious (and maybe it is) - but it's just the way of Thailand during Songkram. Whether you're ready and willing or tremulous and fleeing, you're going to get soaked. If this happened today, I dread what next weekend holds... and I'm buying an arsenal of my own first thing tomorrow morning. May as well go down fighting.