Day Fourteen.

Songkran! The Songkran festival is celebrated in Thailand as the traditional New Year's Day from 13 to 15 April and guess what? We were here for it. Fittingly it is our last day in Thailand and what a way to go; a country wide water pistol fight!

The whole place was eerily quiet this morning and we took the chance to eat a late breakfast (Huge breakfast buffet here at the Siam City) and did some shopping at the MBK which is 5 stories of Thai goods and cheap knockoffs.

We ate lunch at a small Thai chain and then caught the light rail to Sala Daeng station. Songkran is celebrated country wide but in Bangkok, there are two main hotspots. The first is Kao San which is where the tourists go and is supposedly quite big. The second is at the Sala Daeng station and is supposedly more authentic and where the Thai prefer to go... so that's where we went.

Well! Thousands of Thai milling about shooting each other with ice water and selling water bottles for 5 bart (about 15 cents) and little compounds of white powder that you bought and mixed with water to make a kind of paste. The streets were lined with food vendors selling and cooking and the smells were fantastic.

We bought water pistols at a 7-11. They are everywhere.

We all had a ball, squirting old ladies, teenagers and youngsters alike. Everyone had their phones and wallets wrapped in plastic as a matter of course so it was open season. We were plastered with the white slop as people would randomly approach and apply it to your cheeks or splatter a little on your clothing. The water was freezing but not too bad in the heat of the day.

The whole thing was done with such good humor. No a soul was angry. Strangers wished us happy new year and we returned the blessing. It was a great, great thing to do and such a fitting end.

Woot!

The crowd building. It got way more crowded than this.

From the walkway to the station.

Even up here you got splashed.

Now for a shop in one of the upmarket centers we breezed through yesterday before an early rise at 4:00am for a flight home.