The city of the ruins

Chaing Mai... it was the one thing, the one place that i actually planned to go... the one item on my two month gig that was a definite... i was going to be there for the Thai new year Songkran, water festival... which started thousands of years ago as a sacred clearing of the old year to bring in the new... fast-forward to 2009 and it's the single largest water fight on the planet.

For 3 days the country opens fire on each other (possibly not the best choice of words in light of the recent civil unrest) but truly it is a party of epic porportions... and all is fair game... people are armed with water guns, ballons, pales, buckets, even garbage cans filled with water and if you let down your guard for one minute, well you are going to get soaked. There are parades, singing and dancing in the streets and people of all ages getting each other wet by any means possible (kim, that's a lob... go ahead). I had seen a video on youtube that showed unsuspecting tourists traveling in a tuk tuk (open air 3 wheeled taxi) getting drilled with a tidal wave of water by the workers of a local gas station as they drove by... and that is one of those things that as long as it's not you, it's the funniest thing to see in the world... so, needless to say this was one of the soon to be highlights of my trip and i'm tempted, seriously tempted to just make up a bunch of stories that would create the memory i intended to have, but really why lie when the alternative experience that i had was also so memorable...

Chaing Mai, which i thought the book said was the city of the ruins, turns out it was a typo and meant to read the city of the runs... and it didn't disappoint.

I landed at 9:30am was picked up and was checked into my hotel by 10am and was in the bathroom by 10:01am, again at 10:03, 10:10, 10:30,10:33,10:50,11:15,11:40,11:41,11:42,11:50, 12:01,12:07,12:14,12:19,12:30 and 75 more times before the clock struck 1pm...
this continued for the next 72 hours until my driver came and took me to the airport and i got on a plane back to bangkok.

now i'm not asking for sympathy, i still haven't told you everything... it gave me a chance to watch television guilt free and i didn't realize what i was missing, no wonder so many people spend 3-4 hours a night in front of their set... how else could one possibly see the same news reported by 325 different stations enough times to see if they were using any different words or if it was a true exact replica from the earlier broadcast or the other networks broadcast. Multiply this by the 4 languages that i was able to watch but not understand the events of the day that were deamed newsworthy and you have got yourself a never ending cycle of pure unadulterated entertainment. Now as far as i can discern there two stories that were so important that they literally were the news for this entire 72 hour period. Now again, i couldn't understand what they were saying but here's what i got...

1. the country of thailand was under martial law and most of the country had already been killed or mamed... and the rest left for dead... there were burning buses, smoke bombs, sprays of machine gun fire and angry mobs pileging the city in biblical proportions. Now the good news was that in the midst of all this chaos it was still easy to see who was on who's side. The rebels were sporting red shirts, and the goverment, well the government's side could wear any color they wanted except red. I thought that was a very good idea... i mean if everyone is in camo, things could get very confusing.

2. and the second most important thing that was happening in the entire would was that the Obama family got a dog, a little black and white dog, with a rich portugese heritege and can literally stay in the water all day...

Now if this isn't a perfect example of ying and yang, dark and light. i really get why these two stories rose above all others and became the historical markers for April 13-15, 2009. However i felt a little cheated as my stay came to an end. here i had been rivoted on the side of my bed (read toilet) for the better part of 3 days and the "red shirts" just go home and the first dog, still just the one picture with a little rainbow scarf... well needless to say it wasn't the finale i had been set up for...

so here's how i think it should have gone...
after hours, ney days, of the exact same images, same two stories, just when all hope of anything new has vanished...beep, beep, da da beep, beep (do news programs still make that cool noise when there's breaking news?)
in James Earl Jones' voice... "this just in"
cut to an image of the first dog getting on airforce one, a quick good bye bark or two and then the doors close, cut to plane whisking away into the night, cut to landing at Sarangundingawfaradgolsgverfvergonadwerverlaand International Airport (that's the official name for Bangkok's airport, google it... hilarous name... flight attendents start the welcome to speak 15 minutes before landing just to make sure to get the whole name in)
cut to first dog being hustled into a motorcade to the thai parliment building... then nothing for what seems like forever, but because we have short attention spans actually only 2 seconds later, we see leaders from both sides coming out smiling, embracing and promising to work together peacefully in the future.
and is this really so hard to imagine. I mean who doesn't love dogs, and the first dog in its one picutre is sporting a very inclusive and non partisan rainbow scarf... i don't think Thailand has ever had an issue with portugal so like switzerland in that respect...and after resolving their differences and being invited to join the rest of the country for Songkran, well, i can just hear little Bo saying "bring it on" to any and all local gas station attendants.

so i may have missed the local festivities but i feel that i'm more connected to the world at large and up to date on current affairs...

so happy Songkran...
wishing you a very wet and a very regular new year...