Oh, God, Could It Be The Weather?

I was talking a while back with an English friend of mine about the book Watching the English, and how it describes the British obsession with talking about the weather.  According to the book (and backed up by my own experience, once the book helped me crack this oh-so-crucial aspect of socialising in the UK), it’s not enough to simply discuss the weather; you have to discuss the weather correctly.  In the UK, what that means is that you have to agree about the weather.  If someone comments that the rain is dreadful, the right response is, “Oh, yes, it’s awful; it’s not going to be fun trying to get home in that!”  Americans, on the other hand, when speaking about the weather (and a lot of other things), tend to default to trying to one-up each other.  “You call that rain?  You should have seen the nor’easters we used to get when I was living in Boston!”

Since I’ve moved to Thailand, I’ve noticed that the way I discuss the weather has changed again.  Not so much when I talk about it with Thai people, since there’s a strong cultural impetus against disagreeing with someone, so “agree about the weather” pretty much still holds.  “Wanii ron, na kha?”  “Ron, kha!” – “It’s hot today, isn’t it?”  “Yeah, it’s hot!”

No, what’s changed is the way I talk about the weather with folks back home, wherever I consider “home” to be.  Because Americans and Europeans have one thing in common:  when we talk about the weather, we tend to talk about extremes.  “What’s the weather like there?  Because here, it got down to minus ten/it hit over a hundred/we got two feet of snow!

When people ask me what the weather’s like in Thailand, though, extremes are normal.  Hey, it hit over a hundred today!  Just like every day this month.  Instead, what’s notable are the increasing irregularities in what’s supposed to be a very defined cycle of seasons.  There’s hot season, monsoon season, and cold season, and while there can be some overlap at the edges, the majority of each season is usually pretty absolute.

That’s how I end up having conversations like this:

“What’s the weather like there?”

“Oh, it’s scorching!  It’s in the eighties.  What about you?”

“… Um, kind of hotter than that, yeah.  But listen to this:  it rained yesterday.”

“Oh.  Uh, yeah, that sucks.  All day?”

“For like TEN WHOLE MINUTES!”

“…”

“But it’s APRIL!”

Wade In The Water, Children

So – wanted to take a quick break from talking about the Burma trip, because it’s SONGKRAN, BABY!

Songkran is Thai New Year.  Kind of.  It’s not when the year is held to actually begin anymore, but it was, up until the end of the nineteenth century.  So even though it’s been the Buddhist year 2556 since January, Thai people still wish each other “happy New Year” during Songkran.  The festival takes place at the hottest part of the year, after the burning of the rice paddies has finished, but before the planting season starts.  And the fact that it’s the hottest part of the year is crucial, because the Songkran celebrations are about one thing and one thing only:

DRUNKEN.

WATER.

FIGHTS.

FOR FIVE DAYS.

The festivities kinda-sorta started on Thursday, which is how I got doused by a crowd of Thai bar girls with hoses on my way back from work yesterday. :) (I only live about ten minutes from the office, and was kind of hoping I could dash back home unscathed – with, y’know, my laptop – but no such luck!  I’m just glad I’d picked the waterproof briefcase.  Rule 1 of Songkran:  No electronics if you can possibly help it.  If you desperately need your phone – say, if you’re meeting up with friends – or your camera, you can get waterproof bags designed for them, which have, “Here Comes Trouble!” charmingly printed across them.  But they’re no guarantee.  Today I witnessed a Thai dude actually lose his temper and spike his phone like a football because the water had ruined it.  No paper money, either.)

But today was the first full-on day of madness.

I loaded up my 7-11 water rifle and started the four-mile walk down to the moat during the most brutally hot part of the afternoon.  (Rule 2 of Songkran:  DO NOT DRIVE, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD.  A key part of the celebrations involves throwing water at people driving past.  It’s all in good fun, sure – but unless you’re Thai, or you have the previous experience to prove that you can take a gallon of ice water to the face while riding a motorcycle in heavy traffic, DO NOT DRIVE.)  I was already baking by the time I crossed the superhighway, given that I was also in pretty dark clothes.  (Rule 3:  Pick clothes that are still opaque when they’re wet.  I discovered that the hard way, when I found out yesterday that the lovely linen skirt I got from Margaret’s mum for Christmas is completely see-through when you’ve just been hosed down by Thai bar girls. :))  So I was actually relieved when I came across my first truck of Thai students with pails of water.

They looked at me, a little unsure.  One of them raised a cup of water questioningly.

I grinned and made “bring-it” gestures.

And they rained down the Biblical flood upon me.

I was soaked to the skin, and it felt really good, actually, under the circumstances – which was all for the best, because once people see that you’ve been doused, it’s game on.  The next four miles were dotted with families and clusters of friends, all armed with hoses, squirt guns, and pans to scoop water out of massive buckets and kiddie pools.  Some politely asked permission before tossing water at me (Rule 4:  Hefting your own gun and grinning devilishly is the best way of saying, “Bring it on,” although a nod and a smile will also do. :)), while others sneak-attacked me, letting me get almost all the way past before squirting me in the back.  One woman very cheerfully let me refill my gun from her pool – before pouncing on me and pouring ice water down my shirt, yelling, “Happy New Year!”  Meanwhile, more trucks were rolling past, each full of laughing young guys sitting around a rain butt, pouring buckets of water on motorcycles, cars, and pedestrians (well, me) alike.  The only exception to the madness seemed to be the Thai deference for age – no one above middle age was getting drenched, and a lot of older Thais were simply sitting in lawn chairs, sipping beer and observing the carnage with amusement. :)

Rule 5, by the way, is this:  Test your weapon extensively before leaving the house.  I’d done a quick dry (heh) run, enough to figure out that the trigger on my gun, despite being real, has no function; the gun fires when you pump the fore-end.  What I didn’t realise was that the gun keeps firing for a period of time after you do this, and doing it repeatedly only delays firing.  I’d have landed a lot more hits if I’d known that!

Rule 6:  Always overestimate the time it will take you to get anywhere on Songkran.  It’s not like walking; it’s like picking your way through enemy territory, having skirmishes every few minutes.  But I eventually made it down to the moat that surrounds the old city of Chiang Mai.

Rule 7:  At the moat, all bets are off.

It was madness.  There were no polite inquiries or exceptions for age here – just a writhing crowd of soaking wet Thais and farangs, whooping, dancing to the beats that poured from a dozen different stages, and hurling moat water at each other at hurricane speeds.  I… actually really enjoyed it!  Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think I could do it for five or six days running like the Thais do, but it can be a lot of fun to be swept up in a festive crowd like that, where the normal social rules break down.  Plus, I’m secretly five years old, and my inner five-year-old spends a lot more time than she’d like being told to be clean, dry, safe, quiet, and polite to others. :)

And then, as if God himself decided that this looked like fun and he wanted in on it, it poured with rain.  I couldn’t help cracking up at all the people who ran for shelter.  What, do you honestly think you’re going to get wetter?

I watched the parade through Thae Pae Gate, which was awesome, less for the parade itself and more for the crowd’s reactions.  The parade was a string of floats from each of the different wats, each bearing a statue of the Buddha, surrounded by flowers.  Some also had monks riding along.  In one case, a young novice in a jeweled Thai headdress and silk robes was being led on a donkey with flowers woven into its reins.  And every time one of the floats came past, everyone would rush forward… and drench it with water.  It’s a form of worship:  Thai Buddhists also pour water over images of the Buddha when they go to a wat.  But here, it was frenzied; people would run up and pour buckets or bags of perfumed water from the vendors over the Buddha statue, and down the neck and robes of any monks next to it, while the monks would splash everyone in turn with palm leaves dipped in water.  Some of the people at the back of the crowd turned to more drastic measures to pay their respects.  I didn’t know it was acceptable to squirt-gun the Buddha before now. :)

Then I got caught up in a crowd of dancers in front of one of the stages – it was half mosh pit, half Splash Mountain, as both the singers and the other festival goers turned huge hoses on us as we danced.  Eventually, dripping and exhausted, I limped towards home, stopping at Warrorot Market for one of the best khao sois I’ve had here first – it was actually spicy enough that I didn’t have to dump chili in it! – and then at a restaurant at the riverside to drink something coconut-y and watch the few lone floating lanterns rise above the water.

The walk back was less than fun – my shoes were all slimy and slipping off, and while water-throwing is supposed to end when the sun goes down, there were quite a few younger Thais who didn’t get the message on that one.  But now I’m safely ensconced at home, with my multiple jugs of drinking water and my fridge crammed with bread, cheese, eggs, and ramen.  Rule 8 of Songkran:  always, always, always stock up on supplies, so you can go party if you want to, but you don’t need to leave the house if you don’t. :)

Burma at Last, Part II: Everything Is Broken

(Part 2 of 3)

You see, I've been giving these posts names that are twists on the titles of famous books about Burma (with The River of Lost Footsteps by Thant Myint-U inspiring the title of the first post), but I didn't have to change ANYTHING about the title of Emma Larkin's Everything Is Broken to get it to fit this post.

 

More below the cut:

 

Evolution Hates Me

So, the other night I came home at 2 am...

... to find one of these wandering around my driveway.

I mean, what is even the hell.

Burma At Last, Part I: River of Lost Pratfalls

(This is going to be part 1 of 2 - 3; we'll see how it goes.  Also, I apologise for once again neglecting posting here.  I'll try to be better at posting regular small stories, and not just occasional, massive reports.  But for now - )

I’M BACK FROM BURMA, BABY!

I loved it.  I’ve got severe sunburn, at least twenty mosquito bites, half a dozen blisters, and a skinned thigh, and I did something mysterious and regrettable to my right foot; I managed to rip my trousers, broke my bag, and God knows what I did to my Andropad, which has taken to only displaying a sad little web of jagged lines.  And I spent most of Thursday lying down and groaning faintly with the second-worst case of food poisoning I’ve ever had.  And I don’t even care.  I smell like ADVENTURE and also bug spray.

Madness? This! Is! Thailand!

In a conversation with my friends P. and M. on Facebook, I have empirically determined the Most Thai Thing Ever.

Me:  Today I witnessed a chicken attacking the scorched remains of a floating lantern. That may be the most Thai thing that has ever happened to me.
P:  If it didn't occur on the back of a motorbike, with a dog in the basket, then there's room for improvement.
Me:  This is true. A chicken attacking a lantern, on a motorbike with four people and a dog, driving the wrong way with no lights down the highway with the driver on the phone AND drinking a bottle of Chang, the second guy eating noodles out of a styrofoam container, and the passenger at the back setting off fireworks. As they drive between a wat and a 7-11. There, fixed it.  And they're going to a mookata.
M:  No blindfolds, no gangnam style?

Me:  Oh, shit, yeah! They're all blindfolded, including the dog, and Gangnam Style is playing.
P:  And there's a baby. Preferably being breastfed.

Me:  And not a helmet in sight.
P:  There'd be one, but it'd be hanging off the handle. Maybe one on the dog.
Me:  One of the passengers should be snorting lines of MSG off the guy in front of him.  Cut with chilli.
P:  And all of their names are some variation of Porn.

Translation notes:  This last bit refers to the fact that "porn" is Thai for "beautiful".  There is actually a Porn electrolysis clinic (which, no lie, I thought was named that because they were promising to make you as attractive as a porn star), and a friend of mine has met people named Porn, Supaporn, and in one memorable instance, Pornsuk.

Obviously, you don't actually snort MSG, but we had a conversation some months back about whether cocaine would be more addictive with MSG in it.  And they do love their MSG here.  One of my colleagues says that a meal without MSG is like a marriage without love.

Finally, Chang is a cheap Thai beer.  The mixture of nausea and regret that attacks the next morning after you've drunk too much of it is known as a Changover.

The More You Know!

Falling On My Head Like A New (And Unpleasant) Emotion

It’s ironic that my walk tonight lasted longer than normal, because I got caught up in the celebrations for the end of rainy season – and that’s why I was still half an hour from home when the most violent thunderstorm I’ve seen all year hit.  In Soviet Russia, weather celebrates the end of you!

I’ve taken to walking down, some nights, to a rather lively student food market that’s about halfway between my house and the Ping river; it’s a nice long walk (anywhere from an hour to two hours depending on the route), and it gives me a chance to explore the area a little more.  I drive most places that aren’t in my immediate neighbourhood, so it can be fun to take the slow route:  poke in small shops, get to meet stallholders, try and fail to befriend the local cats.  (Moray can testify that I have very limited success making friends with Thai cats.  By the end of his trip, he was jokingly telling me off for stalking the poor things. :))  I was on my way down there tonight when I heard music near the bus station, and when I followed it, I discovered the drunkest, least organised, happiest damn parade I have ever seen in my life.

There was a truck creeping along in front with a huge money tree on it; then a procession of about forty or fifty people carrying money trees and dancing (I gotta say, elderly Thai ladies can cut a rug; must be all the tai chi); and then another truck with giant speakers and a huge, rotating disco ball.  (Money trees, by the way, if you haven’t seen them, are trees made out of sticks with 20- and 100-baht notes woven into the branches.  They’re a form of Buddhist offering.)  This was the only parade I’ve ever seen where the participants got more excited every time it was held up.  Whenever the truck in front had to stop to let a bus past, the crowd would start dancing more wildly, swigging Leo, and setting off firecrackers right under their feet.  It was kind of awesome, and I was curious about where they were going, so I kept pace with them.  I didn’t actually go over and join them, for fear of intruding or putting a damper on the proceedings (“farang present, this is weird and uncomfortable, better tone it down”)… and, because, you know, what they were doing is a good way to lose some toes. :)  But I joined the stragglers trailing after them, and we picked up more and more people as we went, with the music getting more raucous all the time, until we reached a temple I’d never noticed before, tucked behind the new bus terminal.  The music and the disco ball stopped there, letting the worshipers process in with their offerings… while a few drunken older Thais stuck around to get funky in the middle of the road, under the swirling red and green lights.

I eventually peeled off and went to get dinner at the market (and also to hit my new favourite place – a laid-back bakery/manga library/internet café with fantastic chocolate pudding cake, which I would never have expected to find in such an un-touristy area).  And I’d barely turned back when the wind started up all of a sudden.  I didn’t think much of it, but all the Thai people did – they were instantly scrambling to batten down their stalls and close up the fronts of their shops.

I didn’t get far before the rain started:  big, fat drops that quickly turned into a complete downpour.  I ended up under a plastic shop awning with a middle-aged couple; a young dad and his son on their motorbike; and a young man, probably a student, who crouched near the edge of the awning and watched the rain with a surprisingly peaceful expression on his face.

And this was rain like you wouldn’t believe.  Within minutes, the streets were flooded.  It was coming down so hard that it kicked up a layer of mist a couple of feet thick, so that trying to see the road ahead of you was like peering through fog.  There was a particularly bright flash of lightning, and every light on the street went out; a few emergency lights struggled back on, but a minute later, another flash took those out, as well.  We were left with only the lightning and the headlights of a few cars that had pulled over by the side of the road; even in Thailand, where drivers are completely insane, no one was daring to move.  (Watching raindrops in headlights is the weirdest thing, by the way.  They look like they’re made with stop-go claymation.)

After maybe twenty minutes, it started to slacken a bit.  The couple were the first to leave, her clinging to his back on the motorbike so that they could wrap themselves in the same poncho.  A little while later, I decided that this was as good as it was going to get, and struck out for home.

The walk back was an adventure, let me tell you.  The fun part was balancing precariously on the curb – the only part of the sidewalk still above water – and then having the sheaves of water thrown up by passing cars soak me up to the shoulder.  (Well, that and walking by a lot of dry people smugly eating hot soup at a hotpot restaurant.  Bastards. :))  But I was doing okay… until I reached the petrol station, where the forecourt had become a lake.  The water was shin-deep; I ended up having to wade across, thinking uncomfortably about all those public-service animations from the time of the Bangkok floods, showing downed power lines and hidden sinkholes and families of crocodiles.  (Well, okay, I wasn’t really focusing on that last one.)

The rain picked up again just as I turned into my street, about five minutes from home; I finally staggered home, so drenched that the neighbour’s dog didn’t recognise my smell and practically went for me.  (Fortunately, we are talking about a miniature freaking poodle here, so I wasn’t exactly in danger. :))  I came home to a power outage, but thankfully it only lasted about an hour.  Which means that I had to shower in cold water in the dark, but I didn’t care – it just felt so good to be clean and dry.  And now I can actually heat up my dinner (which survived the walk – the Thai habit of putting everything in multiple plastic bags pays off!) and relax with some cartoons.

By the way, I did run into at least one refugee from the parade on the walk home.  She was wearing a soaked and tattered pink tulle skirt, and was trying to keep dry by holding an overturned silver offering bowl over her head.  Poor kid.  The celebrations for Loy Krathong may start a few days early, but rainy season isn’t giving up that easily.