water water everywhere - songkran / thingyan

the past week, mae sot, along with most of thailand (with the notable exception of bangkok. yikes.) and burma, celebrated their new year by what else, dowsing each other with an obscene amount of water.

when i asked why here is the explanation i got: "now it is very hot. it can make the dirty and everything make the dusty. so we pour the water to make cool and also not dirty and no more for the dusty."

makes sense to me.

i was hoping to find a quiet and dry place to witness said festivities, but as they (and by they, specifically i mean oglethorpe from aqua teen hunger force) say, "plans are for fools."

the first group of people who came unannounced to pick me up for a water-filled fun time was my old students. surprise!

we are all soaked here. we drove around town splashing people and getting really really water-logged.

here we are filling our ammunition back up.

i really wish i could have taken more pictures. tons of people were in the streets dancing and throwing water and rubbing colored powder on each other. there was music playing and a lot of screaming and laughing. it was fun. however, had i had my camera out, the camera would certainly be no more as they were literally dumping whole buckets of water on you.

my school dropped me off sopping wet, and i was just about to get in the shower to clean off when a truck full of people from kdhw (one of the health groups i work with) came to pick up me and my friend tyler, who was working downstairs. the director, eh kalu, said he wouldn't take no for an answer, and so we went.

these people were even more serious about it. one of the data girls i work with who's super demure and shy was pegging people right and left. they were dancing in the truck and singing. they even took their water up a notch to include a huge blocks of ice. it was so cold!

i can safely say that i definitely feel life is fuller having stood in the back of a pickup truck, with a bunch of people fighting for the health of burma's ethnic minorities, holding on for dear life and splashing the hell out of people in what was the largest water fight i've ever seen.

after exhausting our water supply, eh kalu annouced that we were going to the hot springs, where we cooked eggs (pictured below and which i did not eat. eww.), ate ice cream, and had lunch before returning home.


number of days without sunburn: approximately 12.