BANG BANG BANGKOK!

Hello friends,

well what can I say about Bangkok ahahah? People see movies like Hangover 2 and hear crazy stories about this massive party city so when they get there their I feel most peoples exceptions of the city are very specific and probably quite high. I know mine were. So I was amazed when my expectations were met and surpassed ahaha. We made sure that we would be in Thailand for their new year which is called "Songkran". This is a three day holiday which is celebrated by everyone in the country. One of the main purposes of Songkran is to wash away any bad luck or feelings from the past year and completely start over. How one does this is through the amazing element of water! This festival is essentially a huge three day long WATER FIGHT! Locals and tourists alike take to the city streets armed with huge super-soakers and buckets of watered-down-chock that becomes more of a paste. Locals walk around and touch both sides of your face with this paste blessing you, "cleansing your soul", and wishing you happy new year! Most tourists just walk around and engage in huge water fights. Now anyone who knows me at all can imagine how much fun this festival would be for me :D. 

I booked a hostel called Udee Hostel outside of downtown for the first few nights because we weren't sure if we wanted to be downtown for Songkran (YOU DEFINITELY DO!!!!). Udee was super nice and cheap and we loved it but we moved down town to D&D (which is right on Khoa San Road) after the first day of Songkran. We arrived one day before the festival even started so we explored the city a bit and took a canal tour, which was really cool. 

We tried to go to the royal place but the Royal Queen had pasted away on that very day a year previous so everything was closed. Well not everything. I was told about "Thieves Market" which as you can imagine is a bona fide black market for anything illegal, frowned upon, or shady. IT WAS AWESOME!!!! There were tons of stolen electronics, tons of pirated porn, and knock off brand named clothes. Essentially anything you could think of you could get here . I am pretty sure this is where Russian super villains come to get their nuclear guidance chips just an FYI. 

The next day was the first day of Songkran so my compadrez and I grabbed a couple of friends we had made at our hostel and went down to Khao San Road which is the main party road in Bangkok. Unfortunately we took two different cabs and just said "meet you at Khao San Road" hahaha, thus we never ended up seeing each other ahaha. We did however have an AMAZING time! We bought the biggest super soakers we could get out hands on and entered the battle. We walked around the JAM PACKED streets of downtwon Bangkokfor about 3 or 4 hours buying road wobbly pops every new street and getting into huge water fights with different groups of tourists. It was a great way to make friends and just have TONS OF FUN! I didnt take to many pictures for obvious reasons but here are a few and I have a video or two on Facebook.

That night thanks to the power of the almighty book I found out my friend Isabell, who I met while on exchange in Sweden, was doing her exchange in Bangkok. So we met up with their crew and taught them all what I thought was the global quint essential drinking game Kings cup AKA Sociables AKA Ring of Fire. They had a blast and especially loved my favourate part of that game "Goggles!" (Sorry Haller is a hit here in Asia!). We went out to this crazy part street and hit this huge DJ party which was based around water and had amazing time! One of the coolest parties I have ever been to for sure.

The next day we were lucky enough to be hanging around our good friend Tour Guide Bonnie who had befriended every local within a 2 mile radius. Fortunately for us one of the guys she had befriened was a SUPER nice guy who had a pick up truck and had two huge rubber barrels filled to the brim with water and he invited us to all jump into the back and he would drive us around the streets Bangkok so we could experience Songkran like the locals do. Now I know what your thinking "Derek are you telling me you just jumped in the back of a randos pick up truck who said he just wanted to drive you around the streets for a few hours?" ................... Yes...... Yes that is exactly what happened actually ahahah. It was an amazing day! We soaked a tons of people especially women and children and got a great street tour of all Bangkok! A couple of the guys on our group got accosted by what I assumed to be retired old prostitutes haha but that was a hilarious experience in and of itself! 

That night we moved to one of the better hostels I have ever stayed at! Huge shout out to Johnston Crawford, Tap Daddy, and Sahara for the great recommendation. This experience of just getting to this hostel during Songkran was INSANE!!!! Because it is situated right downtown on the busiest party road in Bangkok and all roads around it for a block or two are closed because of the festival haha. So we had out huge backpacks on our heads wading through seas of drunk tourists who were having the BEST time shooting us in the faces because we were such big targets and couldn't fight back hahaha. We met a couple who were staying at D&D and they helped us find it but it was a bit crazy ahaha. We got settled in then went right back out and join the party! 

The next day we finally met up with the amazing Blake Adams and partied all day and literally all night with him! I will not go into any details of what happened on this night but lets just say it was one of the craziest times I have ever had and it ended at 5am on Khoa San Road with me mentally scarred, feeling extremely positive, and trying to find a lost Simon Monk ahahah. 

Songkran MADE Bangkok for me and it is definately one of the highlights of my trip so far! It is something that could NEVER happen in Canada though unfortunately! There would be SOOOOOOOOOOOOOO many fights and know city would allow it because of the amount of drinking that would happen. It was such a different atmosphere in Thailand though. People genuinely were going out to bless complete strangers and wish them a happy start of a brand spanking new year. The whole three days reminded me of a city wide block party. Everyone was so relaxed and just wanted to enjoy this fantastic holiday! I give Songkran a perfect 5 water guns out of 5 water guns! Best festival you could ever go to! Take that silly Italian tomato fight or that bull running nonsense out and throw this right in there! 

Other Observations: 

- There is a fast food chain called MR Donut in Thailand which I quite enjoyed!

- The Thai people LOVE their King! Before any movie in the movie theatre you have to rise and listen, to what I beleive to be the national anthem, and watch a quick movie about him. His picture is EVERYWHERE and when a Thai person would see it they would bow and pray. It was amazing. 

- Don't worry about offending anyone. When in doubt just ask if the person your talking to, just met, or dancing with is a dude or not. The whole time I was there I would jsut assume everyone was a dude because being a lady boy is very culturally acceptable.

- Thai people are soooo nice and happy!