Songkran Highnoon

8/9/2019 Songkran Highnoon

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Songkran High NoonBy Andrew Flohr-Spence

He came hissing and scratching around a corner thirty feet in front of us. A

cartoon, he looked like a blur of twiggy legs, yellow and red plastic, a black mop of

hair and big grinbut he wasnt a cartoon.

Katja and I twitched in unison, as nerve-jangled and depleated as we felt at that

point, but relaxed with the harmless look of the cute kidan underfed, Bangkok street

urchin, wearing a tattered Michael Jordan T-shirt like a dress, carrying an enormous

plastic toy and scampering somewhere ahurry. His sky-blue, too-large flip-flops smacked

on the cool shaded concrete with a final pop as he came tothe next moment he was

calm and walking toward us with a big smile on his little face, looking curiously strait

ahead as if focused on something past us.

Aww, Katja sighed. Hes so swe...


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We both stoppedfrozen when we saw what the little bastard was raising to his

hip, level in our direction. Im pretty sure I let out a slight groan. Katja and I glanced at

one another. She looked desperate.

After my sigh was silence. A train passing above. Time slowed inevitable like

your typical spaghetti western, the grinning villain sauntering up having cornered the

hero and his gal unarmed.

Fucking Buddha holiday, I mumbled under my breath.

The Songkran holiday celebrated Buddhas birthday (2545 the old chap would be)

and our quide book described a three-day festival April 13 to15

traditionally celebrated

by sprinkling water on the likeness of Buddha and the hands of elderly to show

reverence. Your water symbolized life, enlightenment and rebirth, a cleansing and

rejuvenation of the soul.

Whatever. We wanted to leave.

We are pooped after our 3 months of travel and find everything closed for a

holiday. The holiday sounds interestingbut home is the only place we want to be!

Katja wrote on a postcard to her mother, on the train rolling into the main station.

But instead of trying to connect strait through, booking a flight or train or bus

somewhere, we went strait to find a hotel room for the night and get some dinner.

Ironically, at dinner we watched workmen build a great stage for the coming festivities.

We never once tried that day to book ticketstotally oblivious to the fact that with each

multicolored banner and flag we watched the workers hang, the possibility of our

departure grew slimmer.


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When we arose the next day, making our way through the streetshardly

noticing the first few brightly colored balloons whizzing aboutand walked into the first

agents office, the guy just started laughing. He thought we were joking.

We could book a ticket next week, but the only tickets south or anywhere right

now cost nearly $400, in the ballpark of2000 percent higher than usual due to the

holiday, but of coursewe were surely only making fun

We laughed at the agentthought he was joking. Your price was usually a

couple hundred Baht, or around twenty dollars, and $400 was about 1000 times more

than we could afford. We got rude with him and stomped out on the street, but every

agent said the same thing. So Sorry, so sorry.

Trapped in Bangkok until the holiday was over, we decided to make the best of

the situation and join in the celebration. At least, we thought we would.

When we arrived back in the Hotel lobby it was like stepping into a beachparty

war room, the room packed with swimsuit wearing men and women, faces painted,

running over strategy and planning attacks.

What are they up to? I asked a older gentlman next to me at the frontdesk.

Songkran, the older Britisher said. Itsfaranghunting season, one either stays

inside today, or one gets wet.

Farang? I asked.

What the Thai call youmeany Westerner, he clarified. The problem is the

punks come inside, toobastards walk right in on some suicide missionan armful of

balloons, you know? These fine soldiers are planning the defence of the hotel. He

nodded toward the Thai glee club.


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I didnt answer, not knowing whether to believe him. It sounded a bit dramatic.

Personally, Ill be doing a bit of reading todayupstairs in my room, he said.

I smiled, said thanks, buddy and moved away.

This was for Songkran? Buddhas birthday? Listening in to the soldiers I was

impressed that they took everything quite seriouslyone of the leaders actually

approached and told me in no uncertain terms I was needed to defend the hotel. I thought

he was taking this a bit too farlittle did I know.

So I went out there the first dayand well, as with many traditions in the modern

age, the historical and modern celebration of Songran had little in common. It was

beyond any water-war I ever imagined. Despite what our guide book explained as a

respectful, contemplative holiday, in Bangkok, especially anywhere near tourist centers,

Buddhas birthday devolved into shear pandemonium on the streets. Songkran was a

giant, countrywide and state-sanctioned water-war. An epic pool party from Laos,

Cambodia, Thailand and probably several other countries. It was serious. Dangerous.

Perhaps the first thing I noticed stepping from the doors of the hotel besides the

fact someone had actually built a sandbagged bunker around the entrance, was that the

vast amount of the enemy was mobile. Pickups clogged the parkway as far as the eye

could see, the streets, the alleys; everywhere. The trucks acted as platforms on which

brightly dressed youths danced and screamed around large barrels of water. Like a

psychedelic ToysRUs Taliban militias they were armed to the teeth with all the plastics

industry could offer.

The older kids (and many adults) took turns manning the various weapons: some

hurled balloons nearly nonstop (the air, in waves, would be nearly fuzzy with small


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whipping balloons from the literally hundreds of people throwing them) and others would

man the big guns. Down low in the beds, children refilled the guns and replentished the

stores of balloons.

These people were professionals.Fuck.

Sure, you had miniature and life-sized police pistol quirt guns like I knew from

childhood. But the Thais wore five or six of these, hanging in their pockets or belts, I

think more as a joke. You have to understand the scale of this engagement. This is not

your neighborhood Sunday waterfight. I fought with squirt guns of every size, buckets,

hoses, whatever means necessary to soak everyone who crossed my path. There were

your supersoakers of every extentthe 100 all the way to the 5000 that resembles some

sort of Teletubby flamethrower with the large futuristic gun and a tube connected to a

backpack with gallons and gallons of ammunition. And even then, I felt outgunned.

The Songkran water militias didnt mess with puny, whimpy guns with their slow,

even tinkleplayfully wetting the victim but rarely evoking more than a giggle as he or

she shrugs and dances it off. Nofor the Thai warrior the only suitable weapon were

water balloons or a type of homemade water shotgun.

Both left the unlucky sap on the receiving end instantly soaked.

The shotguns were over the top, really. With a jerk of the arm, an explosive

geyser of dank ditchwater lept from the long shotgun-like tube and was then quickly

dipped in the water reserves, filled in one muscular tug and wielded once more. The only

constraint on this rapid-fire aqua-bazooka was the strength in the persons arm.When

these madmen and madwomen turned from refilling with their crazed eyes searching for

a target, the crowd ducked and dove in every direction in that slow-motion Hollywood


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Incoming! way and you couldnt move fast enough and just stood out in the open in

horror watching the eyes focus before everything went white and painful.

And the streets packed shoulder-to-shoulder with squealing masses, wet from

head to toe, smeared white. Revelers mixed Talcum with water to form a white paste and

then smeared the paste on the faces of passersby or simply threw it like mud. Like Mardi

Gras, the streets packed, only the beads replaced with talcum and water. Its normally

prim and smiling Thailands week of letting loose, getting down and dirty. A gigantic wet

T-shirt contest for the perverts who like to see 13-year-old Thai girls giggle. A time for

Thais to take out their frustrations on each other and especially thefarang.The young

Thai acting like gangs and marauding around. The elderly Thais, probably just on their

way to work were often the only ones usually spared, but still they walked slowly as if on

glass, ready to jump at the slightest threat.

The children just love it.

And then there are the tourists who have just arrived, innocent of such a festival

and of course exhausted from their travels, who step off their bus eyes wide in horror at

the chaos and apparent open war occurring around them and just want to make it to the

hotel reception. Unknowingly, they have stepped into chaos. For them there will be no

mercy. Youd think their hotel might have warned them, but for some odd reason, the

hotel rarely does and when they turn the corner onto the street a sudden relative silence

takes hold like Indians watching a stagecoach pass until whammo.

Kind of mean, really. But when you have a bucket full of water in your hand and

your dripping wet, you are like a dog: their wide eyes full of panic are something fun,

something to play with. And they keep walking right into the trap! Trying to act cool they


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look down at their watches, down at the ground, mumbling, What in gods name is

happening, dear? Honey, look in the guidebook under holidays, quickly whats that?

Oh god, NO! But its too late. Mark another in the Worst Vacation Evercolumn.

Some lost their cool and screamed or cursed. And it was these that became the

immediate targets of all standing nearby. They had lost face, lost their mellow, couldnt

take a joke, and now they were doomed to be wetter than ever. Buddha was watching.

There was nothing worse than to be openly angry at the child who ran up with a bucket

and launched its contents a shrill giggle ringing out into your face.

But, god damn! Youve got maybe a nice pair of clothes on, and you dont expect

to get attackedand Jesus, its ice cold water but Christ, you look silly screaming at

the 5-year-old who just smiles and doesnt even understand your tirade anyway, and

keeps squirting the line of water at your face while you yell.

Dont you seem ridiculous standing in the crowd of happy laughing revelers,

trying to stop the fun? Scrooge! Buddha would surely laugh at you, too, his belly jiggling.

Hed probably say you missed the point of it all. And what could you say? You came to

Rome, saw how they live, and now youre telling the Romans to stop being Roman. Its a

thousand year old tradition; do you expect it to stop for you?

I did not. At least the first day.

I think everything finally caught up to me. After the first day, I was beat.

And, no wonder. I had had to care for Katja at each moment, every step she made;

carrying all the luggage, helping her walk as well as getting my own half- ill self through

the muggy weight of the hot Southeast Asian day. And bus after bus over the worst roads,

wandering from town to town looking for a doctor. Laos simply had no decent hospitals,


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and we decided to make the trek out of the secluded country. We thought it could be

dengue fever or malaria, or something worse. So it was a relief when we finally talked to

first-rate doctors after arriving across the boarder in Thailand and we confirmed it was

dysentery.

After picking up the medicationa massive course of antibioticswe decided

the best thing was to take a vacation somewhere for a week or so and from the big city

we could go anywhere. The islands sounded best: beach, swimming, fruit shakes,

relaxing atmosphere. We took the overnight sleeper south to Bangkok.

Do you think everything will be closed? Katja asked as we neared the station.

No way, this is a city that never sleeps, I answered.

But everything was closed. Not asleep, just closed.

Day two of at least three for Songkran and we both had had enough. Since I came

in for lunch soaked and tired the first morning, wed lived hunkered down, in a state of

seige. We couldnt go out the front door without being a target. Elite squads incessantly

attepted infiltration of the building. At this point Katja was half dead and I was starting to

feel weak, too. Still hurting from the water fight the day before. My ears still stung from a

balloon I took.

So we had snuck away early the third morning to avoid getting wet, on a tip that

there was one travel agent downtown who always had flightsand now we stood face to

face with our worse fear.

Our whole universe held like warm tapwater in the fragile balloon of an idea, the

idea of going to the travel agency just up ahead in the building past the kid and booking a

ticket the hell out of this city. The thought of getting drenched at this moment by some


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cute, giggling youth seemed horrible and final like a pin to their balloon that would blast

it all to pieces. What the kid didnt know was the couple were prepared to defend their

little balloon whatever it took.

I remember staring down the barrel of the day-glow squirt gun, one of those

bulbous flamethrower looking contraptionsan Ultra-soaker-matron, or whatever

wielded by the emaciated tike half its size who couldnt have been a day older than five

or six, and I was thinking as the squirt walked toward us that it all came down to this

moment to my decision now, to the kids decision.

Somehow I had to convince the kid not to shoot. The kid had no idea about any

balloons but water balloons. He had no idea what he represented, what we had gone

through in the last month, what we'd seen, how desperate we were to just make it to the

travel agency and have the answer be yes. He had no idea we had just survived four

weeks of a mysterious illness and retreated back across the border to civilization only

three days before, on an oven-hot day with the lone goal of reaching a real hospital and

getting our stools sampled. Katja worsepale and skinny from sitting hour after hour

under the neon light on toilet after toilet. But the trip had exhausted us both.

Indeed, that a grown man and woman would debate murdering a small child

simply because the kid might squirt a little water their direction is testament to the

desperate point my wife and I had reached. But if murdering one toddler was the only

way to find an escapewell, so be it.

Forget all that talk about non-violence and pacifism and such, and that here I was

faced with a small child and asking myself the question: kill or not kill: fight or flight.

That was how far I had been pushed. I felt backed into a corner with no route of escape


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an assailant threatening my self and my mateand instinct was flooding my nerves with

crazy hormones. I was exhausted.

The mysterious sickness, calling off ourlong-planned journey midway through,

delaying all the important work we had planned so long, and now we just wanted to flee

this place for a bit and get some rest, and the whole goddamn week there hasnt been a

goddamn ticket to be had in the whole damn city of Bangkok because of some stupid

holiday. It was enough now. The journeys endless frustration, fear and exasperation

were welling up inside my body. All that hate seemed to be focusing in my eyes as if at

any moment they would shoot lasers and facing him was the sly jubilant smile of this brat

who had twofarangs right where he dreamed all day of catching some yes, this was

just too much. Not that I could blame the kid. The innocent little brat thought it was

Christmas, his birthday and New Years all rolled into one and here was the shiny fun

present he had always wanted.

If the little punk pulls the trigger, I will snap, I thought and looked deep into the

childs eyes, trying to include all our pain and anguish into that look. And I looked into

the childs little eyes and the child looked at meand we communicated! The child had

changed his mind and decided to spare us, I am sure of that. The kid understood.

It was the mob of kids behind him that didnt.

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Songkran Highnoon