As you may or may not have heard, there were a series of riots in Bangkok over the Songkran festival - two opposing political parties, the red shirts and the yellow shirts, basically having it out with one another in the streets of Bangkok. One of the Prime Ministers decoy cars was broken into whilst driving down the street - presumably an assassination attempt. Another important official was shot in the head whilst in his car the other day - there were bullet marks all over the front bonnet - he's recovering in hospital at the moment. Rioters set fire to buses and drove them into one another on major highways. There was a tank on Soh Khan road (the main tourist section of Bangkok). Locals and rioters clashed when the locals tried to protect their homes from the random fires that rioters were setting off around the city - two of the local people are now dead and several others severely beaten. Apparently.
I, luckily, was sitting on a tiny little island 500km away reading about it all in the (extremely biased) Bangkok Post.
Needless to say, I was pretty glad that we had missed all of this (we had been in Bangkok only 2 days earlier). However, the tourists I have spoken to have nothing to report - it seems that either there were relatively isolated attacks or that tourists were relatively isolated from the attacks.
To put the riots into perspective - two people were killed in the riots. 136 were killed because of Songkran.
Now don't get me wrong. Songkran is meant to be a joyous event. It is the Thai equivalent of New Year. Families gather and pour scented water over each other to show their love and mutual respect. It is a holiday where families get together to share food and time and to celebrate (which seems to be a pretty rare occurrence here - they work A LOT).
But, of course, this celebration escalates into a massive country-wide water fight. Which is great. So long as you're prepared for it. My preparation was correct clothing (i.e. bikini) and sunglasses (for the full frontal face assaults). Gotta be careful not to get the water in your eyes - it can be full of all sorts of weird and exciting tropical fungus. The deaths are normally caused by a combination of slippery roads and gung-ho attitudes to motorbike helmets and, you know, holding onto the motorbike whilst it's moving (instead of, for example, holding your groceries, carrying your pets/ children, and texting your mates - no joke. I have seen all of these things.).
So, that's riots and Songkran for you. My Songkran experience was pretty low key - the local children roamed around with buckets of water - I roamed around with my water pistol. One short water fight with a French tourist but generally it was more of a passive soakage event - very pleasant in the heat. I got a lot of yoghurt paste on my face - no one has explained to me what this has to do with Songkran but it was all very endearing just the same.
One night on Ko Phayam, we went out looking for a party. It's a pretty quiet little island - I was hoping for a bit more party-action to be honest - and cheaper cocktails - but all the same, there were plenty of young backpackery types around, so where was the party? After an hour of hunting, we got a tip-off - 'the Hippy Hut is where it's at tonight, guys' - and then couldn't find a taxi to take us there. Disaster. Anyway, about an hour later, we managed to get a couple of motorbikes to shuttle us to the Hippy Hut. Motorbike taxis and island roads work quite well together; they can weave around the potholes and make it along the dirt tracks to the beach. However, when you have 3 people on a motorbike, 2 females and one male (the male being the driver) can lead to some unavoidably closer-than-comfortable positions. I spent the entire 40 minute journey trying to compensate for my overly friendly crotch pressing by arching the rest of my body away from the driver in this weird C-shaped position that no spine should ever have to achieve. Probably doing wonders for my abs though.
The party was decidedly Hip as opposed to Hippy - although there was a lot of weed going round, and cheapish cocktails. Also, a hippy-ish French girl, totally out of it, swinging her full length hair round and round in time to the music. But it was more Bohemian-slash-Rasta than hippy. I spent most of the evening in deep philosophicals, instead of completing my intended 'humiliate my nation with drunken dancing' routine. Aw well. Sometimes even the best laid plans must give way to chaos.
Having done a little sea-kayaking in South Africa. I was keen to go out and try it again (although this time without the whale watching :( boo). My first attempt failed miserably as I, very publicly, made an ass out of myself. Approaching the oncoming wave at a dodgy angle , I tipped out the kayak. Very unceremoniously. I scratched both my knees up. As you now know, there are a lot of weird and exciting fungal diseases you can catch in these tropical waters, so I deemed it unwise to get in the water for a day or two until the scratches had healed over (cue Louise putting alcoholic hand sanitizer on her grazes and nearly biting her own lips off in agony).
Second attempt: much better. Less waves on the shore (although choppier out on the ocean), John and I kayaked around some tiny little islands just offshore. We saw a rope tied to an overhanging cliff on one of these islands. I looked at it. It dangled tantalisingly at me. And then those fatal words escaped my lips 'Hey, John, wouldn't it make a cool photo if...'. How many stupid and half-baked actions in peoples lives have been preceded by that sentence?! So, about 5 minutes later, after some careful manouvering, I hung on a rope surrounded by ocean. John took pictures. I grimace-smiled - as 5 minutes is actually quite a long time to dangle for, you know.
What the rope was doing hanging off a cliff in the middle of the ocean I could not say. It is quite possible that someone was kayaking around, saw the appropriate cliff face, saw the appropriate rope, put two and two together and before they knew it they were saying 'Hey, guys, wouldn't it make a cool photo if...'.
I, luckily, was sitting on a tiny little island 500km away reading about it all in the (extremely biased) Bangkok Post.
Needless to say, I was pretty glad that we had missed all of this (we had been in Bangkok only 2 days earlier). However, the tourists I have spoken to have nothing to report - it seems that either there were relatively isolated attacks or that tourists were relatively isolated from the attacks.
To put the riots into perspective - two people were killed in the riots. 136 were killed because of Songkran.
Now don't get me wrong. Songkran is meant to be a joyous event. It is the Thai equivalent of New Year. Families gather and pour scented water over each other to show their love and mutual respect. It is a holiday where families get together to share food and time and to celebrate (which seems to be a pretty rare occurrence here - they work A LOT).
But, of course, this celebration escalates into a massive country-wide water fight. Which is great. So long as you're prepared for it. My preparation was correct clothing (i.e. bikini) and sunglasses (for the full frontal face assaults). Gotta be careful not to get the water in your eyes - it can be full of all sorts of weird and exciting tropical fungus. The deaths are normally caused by a combination of slippery roads and gung-ho attitudes to motorbike helmets and, you know, holding onto the motorbike whilst it's moving (instead of, for example, holding your groceries, carrying your pets/ children, and texting your mates - no joke. I have seen all of these things.).
So, that's riots and Songkran for you. My Songkran experience was pretty low key - the local children roamed around with buckets of water - I roamed around with my water pistol. One short water fight with a French tourist but generally it was more of a passive soakage event - very pleasant in the heat. I got a lot of yoghurt paste on my face - no one has explained to me what this has to do with Songkran but it was all very endearing just the same.
One night on Ko Phayam, we went out looking for a party. It's a pretty quiet little island - I was hoping for a bit more party-action to be honest - and cheaper cocktails - but all the same, there were plenty of young backpackery types around, so where was the party? After an hour of hunting, we got a tip-off - 'the Hippy Hut is where it's at tonight, guys' - and then couldn't find a taxi to take us there. Disaster. Anyway, about an hour later, we managed to get a couple of motorbikes to shuttle us to the Hippy Hut. Motorbike taxis and island roads work quite well together; they can weave around the potholes and make it along the dirt tracks to the beach. However, when you have 3 people on a motorbike, 2 females and one male (the male being the driver) can lead to some unavoidably closer-than-comfortable positions. I spent the entire 40 minute journey trying to compensate for my overly friendly crotch pressing by arching the rest of my body away from the driver in this weird C-shaped position that no spine should ever have to achieve. Probably doing wonders for my abs though.
The party was decidedly Hip as opposed to Hippy - although there was a lot of weed going round, and cheapish cocktails. Also, a hippy-ish French girl, totally out of it, swinging her full length hair round and round in time to the music. But it was more Bohemian-slash-Rasta than hippy. I spent most of the evening in deep philosophicals, instead of completing my intended 'humiliate my nation with drunken dancing' routine. Aw well. Sometimes even the best laid plans must give way to chaos.
Having done a little sea-kayaking in South Africa. I was keen to go out and try it again (although this time without the whale watching :( boo). My first attempt failed miserably as I, very publicly, made an ass out of myself. Approaching the oncoming wave at a dodgy angle , I tipped out the kayak. Very unceremoniously. I scratched both my knees up. As you now know, there are a lot of weird and exciting fungal diseases you can catch in these tropical waters, so I deemed it unwise to get in the water for a day or two until the scratches had healed over (cue Louise putting alcoholic hand sanitizer on her grazes and nearly biting her own lips off in agony).
Second attempt: much better. Less waves on the shore (although choppier out on the ocean), John and I kayaked around some tiny little islands just offshore. We saw a rope tied to an overhanging cliff on one of these islands. I looked at it. It dangled tantalisingly at me. And then those fatal words escaped my lips 'Hey, John, wouldn't it make a cool photo if...'. How many stupid and half-baked actions in peoples lives have been preceded by that sentence?! So, about 5 minutes later, after some careful manouvering, I hung on a rope surrounded by ocean. John took pictures. I grimace-smiled - as 5 minutes is actually quite a long time to dangle for, you know.
What the rope was doing hanging off a cliff in the middle of the ocean I could not say. It is quite possible that someone was kayaking around, saw the appropriate cliff face, saw the appropriate rope, put two and two together and before they knew it they were saying 'Hey, guys, wouldn't it make a cool photo if...'.
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