It did not look good. There was a truckload of freelance fighters following us and we were heading into a checkpoint where an armed and determined enemy had their weapons pointing directly at us.
We slowed the truck. Our own fighters were ready in the back but we were badly outnumbered and not ready to fight: our planned targets were 15 km away, beyond the badlands where we were expecting an ambush at the orphanage.
‘What do you think?’ asked Ken, commander, Operation Clean Sweep. ‘Do we fight or do we run?’
I could feel the tension rising as I watched the enemy getting ready in their positions and, in the truck mirror, I could see our own fighters preparing for the worst.
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| Khao Lak |
Then all hell broke loose as the enemy, making use of an unmanned police barrier to slow us, opened fire. The first, predictably, were the six-year-old kids. Then their families. Then the big weapons, which just hosed us down, swamping our own puny firepower. And the water was cold, ice cold, and some of the most dangerous of the six-year-olds had red and green water.
Welcome to the Buddhist year 2554… this was Songkran, the Thai new year, and we were joining in the national water madness by driving our volunteer teachers, armed with water guns and two huge tubs of water, through our southern Thailand communities for the great good-humoured water fights that welcome in the new year. Thais go mad at this time and the Andaman coast was no exception. In the past, we have gone north from our base in Khao Lak but this year we went south to ‘play Songkran’ with the communities where our teachers work.
Our first target was Thai Muang, with a mixed population including a large number of Sino-Thais: we struck deep into their heartland around the Chinese temple, fighting a spectacular battle that ended when they gave our fighters not only a good soaking but also bags of crackers as a new year gift.
Then we went on a loop through Thai territory round a huge school and some of the kids out to get us had their school T-shirts on. And finally a Moken sea people village, site of another of our schools. Some of the kids there usually live at the orphanage and came out to greet us with water… In the afternoon, the teachers’ branch office – the Lazy House bar in Khao Lak – was putting on some food for those who wanted to move into the next phase of celebrating Songkran but, alas, I couldn’t join them… I was booked on the red-eye to Chiang Mai, the Songkran madness capital of Thailand. Maybe the universe.
When I emerged from my hotel in Chiang Mai, a thousand miles north of Khao Lak, it was mid-morning the next day. Sunny. Not much noise. Not many people ready with water. Maybe I’d just get a few snaps, have a wander round, eat some khao niew mamuang (sticky rice, fresh mango, sesame seeds, sweet coconut cream)…
The first bucketful of iced water hit me within five minutes. Within 10, there wasn’t any point in bothering to dodge, within an hour there were thousands of people everywhere – on foot, in trucks, on motorcycles.
The old city is surrounded by a moat, more than a kilometre on each side of the square, and I didn’t doubt that what I was experiencing was happening along every section… in my section, just off the moat road, there were three huge live performances of pop music, gyrating girls, and elaborately sprayed water giving a new meaning to ‘rain dance’. The whole event was bizarre, happy and captivatingly infectious and I just joined in, squelching along with everyone else, conning a couple of water throwers into giving me their brimming buckets so that I could pour the water over them.
When I stopped for a few minutes in the thickest of the ‘fighting’, one of the food sellers gave me a Rambo-size watergun and suddenly I found myself as part of the family, partying with the rest as four lanes of trucks and cars, hundreds of motorbikes and streams of passers-by engaged in good-humoured running battles with us.
Then – as the heroes fought on - I made my way back towards my hotel, a soggy couple of kilometres away, an easy and happy target for everyone. But I stopped on the way, bought a tray of fried potatoes because – in what must be the best town anywhere for vegetarians and vegans – there was no street food I could eat.
And then I went into a place I know for some khao niew mamuang… really good, and hopefully before I go they will have another great favourite, sticky rice and durian.
As I write this dry in my hotel, I can hear the shrieks and fun of Songkran and I’d like to be out there with them. But it’s even madder and wetter than earlier. And tomorrow we’re doing it all again…
First published in VISA 98 (Aug 2011)
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