Songkran songkran!
Next trip: Korat (aka Nakhon Ratchasima). It was the weekend of Songkran, the Thai new year, which is a very long weekend. My sister glommed on to a big party up in Korat organized by one of her friends (Rob). Korat is northeast of Bangkok, where tourists rarely go (because it's not very touristy), but Rob once lived there, his girlfriend is from there, and he has friends who still live there.
The train was sold out, so she and I met one of her friends at the crack of dawn at the bus station to desperately try to get a seat on a bus, maybe, sometime during the day, we hoped. The line was interminable where they told us to stand, but there was a shorter line next to it that seemed to be going the same way... so they went and got tickets on the bus ten minutes thence. It took 6 hours rather than the normal 3, but we got to our destination just past noon, after expecting to arrive late in the day.
The city is unremarkable. Thai provincial cities all seem to look the same actually, in a way I'm having trouble describing (you also see some pockets of this sameness in Bangkok). There's not really any old city to it, except for the city moat that otherwise just looks like any other khlong (nasty green water with plastic floating about, slightly smelly), a couple bits of the old city wall, and a couple of temples.
The festival, however, is quite remarkable. For three days, everybody, young and old, gets down in the streets, pours water on each other, and spreads baby powder on each others' faces. Every few shops there'll be the family and friends standing there with a giant bucket of water slowly filling, ready to pounce on any passers by -- and there are many, some of them driving by in pickup trucks, a dozen people riding in the back (at a snail's pace). The tour guides all talk about water guns, the bigger the better. But really what people mostly use is buckets, which trump any water gun. The young adults and those who would like to still be young also pour stunning amounts of beer down their gullets, so it gets a bit scary at night when the traffic can speed up (sometimes driven by said young adults).
My sister's friends were up for three days of this. My sister and I found it wonderful for a day, amusing for the second, and we were pretty much ready not to see any water guns ever again by the third. We also decided on the second day to skip out of Korat and visit Phimai, an hour by bus from there. There's a Khmer ruin there, as it was apparently a major provincial center on the main highway from Angkor. So we showed up, got sopping wet and covered in baby powder, pulled out wet bills to pay the entrance fee to the historical site, and walked in flanked by piles of water guns and baby powder bottles that the guards were telling people to leave behind lest they muck up the ruins. The temple itself was interesting, with all the carvings and architectural forms that I'd heard about but never seen before.
The train was sold out, so she and I met one of her friends at the crack of dawn at the bus station to desperately try to get a seat on a bus, maybe, sometime during the day, we hoped. The line was interminable where they told us to stand, but there was a shorter line next to it that seemed to be going the same way... so they went and got tickets on the bus ten minutes thence. It took 6 hours rather than the normal 3, but we got to our destination just past noon, after expecting to arrive late in the day.
The city is unremarkable. Thai provincial cities all seem to look the same actually, in a way I'm having trouble describing (you also see some pockets of this sameness in Bangkok). There's not really any old city to it, except for the city moat that otherwise just looks like any other khlong (nasty green water with plastic floating about, slightly smelly), a couple bits of the old city wall, and a couple of temples.
The festival, however, is quite remarkable. For three days, everybody, young and old, gets down in the streets, pours water on each other, and spreads baby powder on each others' faces. Every few shops there'll be the family and friends standing there with a giant bucket of water slowly filling, ready to pounce on any passers by -- and there are many, some of them driving by in pickup trucks, a dozen people riding in the back (at a snail's pace). The tour guides all talk about water guns, the bigger the better. But really what people mostly use is buckets, which trump any water gun. The young adults and those who would like to still be young also pour stunning amounts of beer down their gullets, so it gets a bit scary at night when the traffic can speed up (sometimes driven by said young adults).
My sister's friends were up for three days of this. My sister and I found it wonderful for a day, amusing for the second, and we were pretty much ready not to see any water guns ever again by the third. We also decided on the second day to skip out of Korat and visit Phimai, an hour by bus from there. There's a Khmer ruin there, as it was apparently a major provincial center on the main highway from Angkor. So we showed up, got sopping wet and covered in baby powder, pulled out wet bills to pay the entrance fee to the historical site, and walked in flanked by piles of water guns and baby powder bottles that the guards were telling people to leave behind lest they muck up the ruins. The temple itself was interesting, with all the carvings and architectural forms that I'd heard about but never seen before.