SONG KRAN

Happy Song Kran!

It’s Thai New Year (Easter doesn’t exist), and what better way to celebrate than a 4-day weekend? How about splashing EVERYONE with water.

For three days there’s been gangs set up on street corners, and roaming utes full of people with buckets of water and water-pistols targeting anyone and everything that comes within range. There’s music playing all over the streets, and a fair few bottles of Chang beer have been consumed. It’s all in good fun, and even the girl soaked head-to-toe with her make-up running is smiling.

There’s also a special ‘Song Kran Goo’ that people are smearing on each others’ faces. It feels like hair-gel, but turns into a powder after a couple of minutes. The city and skytrain are full of people with wet clothes and goo smeared all over them.

A favourite target for the water crews seems to be the numerous motorbike taxis, no wonder the road toll spikes at this time of year. I saw a 7-year-old dropping bucket loads of water off an overpass aiming for the bikes as they zoomed underneath. Mum and dad looked on proudly. There are cars all over Bangkok covered in goo. The tuk-tuk drivers seem to be in on it too, slowing down as they pass the water gangs to allow their passengers to be splashed (or maybe to avoid a major accident, who knows?).

Everyone’s smiling, and that’s what’s important.

SOAKINGS: 1

MILD WETTINGS: 2

PENANG

A friend and I availed ourselves of the wondrous AirAsia’s service this weekend and took a trip to Penang. If you time it right, you can fly to many places in Asia for less that AU$100, and we did, so we did.

Penang’s one messed up city. There’s massive colonial building in good shape, in bad shape, slum areas, huge new hotels, old hotels in need of some paint, and every gradation of residential housing in between. Exactly why there are new hotels I don’t understand, as it seems to be a backpacker place if anything on the tourist route.

There are three major ethnic groups – Malay, Chinese and India, though from the museum’s info it seems like everyone was here at some point due to British trade in the region. The Indian quarter of town is all colourful building and cooking everywhere. We ate nearly entirely Indian as its one of our few chances eat good Indian (I’m a bit over rice and noodles).

Georgetown (the major city) itself doesn’t have that much to see – we went up the hill to look at the view and wandered around to check out what there was, but its good for a change.

On the Sunday we went to Langkawi, an island about 3 hours away, as we discovered after being advised by guidebooks and travel agents its only 2 hours.

The first beach we went to was pure white sands, blue waters and limestone islets within touching distance, backed by rainforest-covered hills. Paradise, we could have stayed there all day except for the jellyfish. We drove around to four more beaches that day, but none were as beautiful as the first.

The last beach had a campsite right up on it, in which about 10 Muslim families had come for holiday. The kids played on the beach, all in full-length clothing and the girls in hijab. They must have been so hot and just dying to get in the water, but there didn’t seem to be any complaint and they all ran around the beach playing games, hide-and-seek maybe.

On our way back from Langkawi night fell and an almighty storm rolled in. We watched it roll from the horizon towards us, blackening as it did. The sky was dark long before the sun went down. The water turned a deep charcoal grey, and the horizon receded in upon us the closer the storm came and took on a hard black edge. The storm spread its canopy over our boat, but dropped ran further away. We watched the lightning for two hours as it lit up the contours of the clouds in an infinite variety of ways.

We stopped at the Snake Temple on the way to the airport – a Buddhist temple with a live collection of vipers. The collection amounted to 4, but they are venomous and free to roam the temple, though their version of roaming seemed to involve a lot of sitting next to candles. You can pay to have one put on your head and a photo taken, but I chose to pass on that wonderful experience.