Songkran in Pranburi

Songkran is Thai New Year and we got three days off from work this week for the holiday. The official new year is January 1 like pretty much everybody else, but the holiday is still Thailand's biggest for the year. For the last two years we've taken the opportunity to travel and get outside the country, the first time to Beijing and Tokyo, and last year we headed home for a couple weeks. This time I wanted to see what it was like in Thailand so we stuck around, though at the last minute decided to head to Pranburi, a few hours SW of Bangkok on the beach. Great place and not too bad a price for the place considering the big holiday and booking it just two days before we took off on the biggest travel weekend of the year. We had a great pool and spent a lot of time hanging out there.

The best day was on Monday when we rented a motorbike and drove around. We got out into the countryside and drove around, including driving through some pretty immense mango plantations. The area is known for pineapples, too, and we saw a lot driving in but none while on the bike. Later we drove along the beach and promptly got drenched by everyone throwing water and shooting massive squirt guns. Songkran is a water festival, which started as a means of respect, pouring water over the hands of elders and so on. But somehow in recent years it's just turned into a nationwide water fight. Everybody's got either a pail of water or a super soaker. We stopped by a roadside stand, bought our own big gun and filled it up with water, then went cruising up and down the beach on our motorbike hitting everybody along the way. Everybody wanted to hit the farang, but were usually pretty surprised when they got hit back. Getting wet's good luck so it's all in good fun, people are happy to get soaked and happy to soak you, too. No pictures of that, however, couldn't risk the camera!