Songkran: Happy New Year!

Scenes from the New Year street celebrations plus Tessa trying to send a few emails with a rock band just a couple of metres behind her in full pelt!

It is really hot here, mid 30's or above today so a New Year custom of hurling water at each other makes perfect sense. It did get really wet in the streets of Ayutthaya, where we arrived at about 2pm after catching busses from where we were yesterday.

We saw the celebrations of New Year in every town and hamlet we passed on our five hour journey, young people with buckets, bowls, vast tubs, hose pipes and water pistols hurling water at each other and smearing faces with a clay and water mixture.

By the time we had found somwhere to stay, unloaded our packs, had a shower and got out to explore Ayutthaya the action was really hotting up, there were loads of pickup trucks packed with very wet young people determindly getting even wetter. We strolled around, trying to look as senior as we could (there is supposed to be the honouring of older people at New Year too), but we still got a bit wet and quite clay covered. People come up to you and gently wipe the clay on your face, its not at all aggressive, but the water hurling is just quite general and if you don't want to get wet, stay indoors. There is also a good deal of beer drinking and very loud music and the patrons of one cafe we had a drink at was having a very amusing tug of war competition with the patrons of cafe next door, every one was fairly drunk and a lot of both teams fell over at the first tug. There was also very drunken street volley ball, but it was all jolly, with lots of hugging going on and the Thai equivalent of ' I really love you' being shouted, anyway ' Happy New Year' to all our readers.

Tess

A quick note on our plans. We came here (and have been very glad to have done so) to avoid Bangkok which is the FCO advice. We also hoped to pick up our sleeper train (already booked from Bangkok) tomorrow night to Chiang Mai in the north. But we learnt this evening from someone else in the hotel (and now confirmed on the FCO site) that no trains are running. We can try to book a coach but the FCO site also mentions road blocks in Chiang Mai.

So we think tomorrow is decision day - do we travel north (if we can do so) in the hope that things will settle down or do we try to leave Thailand as soon as possible? There are a number of people in the hotel (a nice cheap and friendly backpacker place) in the same boat so I daresay there will be some discussion tomorrow morning. None of us want to over-react but on the other hand the news here is consistently getting worse.

Brian

Brian