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Part 1

It never ceases to amaze me. Thailand that is; it’s people, its culture, the religion, the superstitions, and the depths to which some Thais, the Isaan country folk in particular, believe some of these superstitions.

During Songkran it is the time to give Buddha, his statues at least, his once a year bath. This year, after many years visiting the Land of Smiles, I finally was there during this holiday. Luckily for me I spent all of Songkran up in Surin and the village, which is much more laid back and civilized in its celebrations of the Thai New Year. Oh, there were numerous children, and some young at heart adults to be sure, applying scented water and baby powder to the unwary in a less than respectable manner, but from the complaints I’ve heard from many farangs it was nothing like in the bigger cities and tourist centers. Here in the hinterlands of Isaan there seemed to be a bit remaining of the original intent of the holiday. It still remains something other than the full out war zone of Waterworld that it has evolved into in other areas. This being said I still kept my truck’s windows up and the AC on. Snipers and guerillas have infiltrated the community and occasionally could be seen squirting and soaking one and all from the sides of the highways and byways. Still not so bad that you couldn’t walk or drive the streets in fear of having to change your clothes every hour or so, and most combatants were kids, and not that many at that.

Anyone using a motocyke as their main means of transportation during this holiday is extremely foolhardy in my opinion, or just unlucky and/or poor enough to have no other way of getting their butts from one place to another. I have a pick up truck, with decent AC, thank Christ, the windows of which remained firmly closed for most of the holiday as I tooled around the city, and the rural byways and village roads back and forth to our own village abode. Those on motocykes were fair game for anyone on the roadside with ammunition, and it looked like it would be an unpleasant ride during this week if you didn’t like or want to get wet during your jaunt along the sois (roads) to where ever you needed to go. It also looked a bit dangerous to be hit in the face with a bucket of water while you were speeding along at 60 kilos an hour while dodging and weaving past the enemy fire.

Watery ambushes were set up by kids with water filled buckets, funky squirting plastic tubes, which seemed to be the preferred weapon of choice in Isaan, and various pails, buckets, cups, dishes, bowls, ladles, etc., which were used to dispense the liquid blessings of Songkran.

Powders were mostly reserved for hand application of a more personal nature from what I observed up-country, and which I managed to experience quite a few times. Something about a farang just seems to bring out a want or need in most Thais to include us in their sanuk. In the village though most baptisms were done in a more genteel and civilized manner, to the point where they’d even ask you if it was okay to anoint you with the water and powder, which made my first venture into the Songkran holiday much more pleasant than what others I know have been subjected to in Bangkok and Pattaya. I’ve heard the horror stories which abound from farangs of their own Songkran experiences. Mine were much more subdued. Although I did witness pockets of what I can only describe as WMD (Waters of Mass Destruction) warfare being fought here and there during my travels, and I did travel about the Surin area quite a bit.

The best way to avoid getting soaked during Songkran that I noticed is to hang around with a monk or two. They are designated non-combatants, and it isn’t permitted to be splashing the monks from what I saw. So grab yourself a monk or two to walk around with next time you are stuck in the Thailand during Songkran.

I traveled to the Chong Chom border crossing to Cambodia twice during Songkran, and was pleasantly surprised to see that farangs are once again able to cross the border into the Cambodia market and casinos there. After talking with the border crossing authorities I was informed that yes, you can now get your passport stamped at the Cambodian border thereby affecting a cheap and easy visa extension of another 30 days on your tourist visa if needed and necessary. This isn’t done at the crossing though, you need to go down the road a ways to the immigration building and pay your 500 baht fee to get the stamp. (This fee is now 1,200 baht.-Cent)

One immigration officer fella even said they could give me a 90 day visa extension there for 1,500 baht. Good to know. (Although now, a few months later, it seems Taksin and the boys have changed the rules and this may no longer be possible, or if possible, much more expensive. We’ll see next trip in October what happens when I talk to the guy. This story was written a few months ago.)

Twenty baht one way purchases one a motocyke taxi from the border crossing into the Cambo market about a kilometer down a dusty red dirt covered strip of dilapidated tarmac. After about one minute behind the mental midget driving my motocyke taxi I had to tell him to slow the heck down. The guy drove like an idiot, the dirt was a red sand death covering of the potholed tar which caused the bike to slither and slide as we rocketed down the road. I had no desire to spend the rest of this trip healing road rash scabs of an oozing and painful nature if we skidded out on the loose sand and gravel and slippery red dust and hit the pavement, or worse. The guy just laughed, but as I gruffly barked in his ear to “Slow down jackass!” and squeezed his shoulder rather painfully, he got the message and slowed down considerably to a speed I was more comfortable with. Idiot. I did also note that HE had a friggin’ helmet on. None for the passenger though.

I did manage to score a few cans of Angkor Beer while I was there this time, which is a favored Asian beer of mine. It tastes much better than the Thai beers, even the Beer Chang, which I find acceptable when chilled, and is very cheap. I smuggled a few back over the border into the LOS (Land of Smiles-Thailand) in my wife’s humungous purse. We weren’t searched, but the border cops do check your possessions fairly frequently as you come back into Thailand. I was fully prepared to pay a small bribe if they gave me any guff about the beers, just so I could have the pleasure of quaffing a couple of ice cold Angkor beers direct from the freezer that evening. Very tasty stuff this Cambo beer is. Someone please inform me if they know of a place in Thailand where I can purchase a supply of Angkor Beer. I’d be grateful!

Part 2

I hung around where I had parked the pick-up truck near the Chong Chum Cambodian border area the first time there that week, listening to the truck’s stereo and drinking a beer Chang or two. I waited on the Thai side for wife and family to do their shopping. I had still been under the impression that the border crossing was closed for farang at that time, so didn’t bother trying to cross over. Prime Minister Taksin had closed it earlier due to much crime against farang while over the border in Cambodia gambling and shopping (they had just completed building one casino just over the borderline by then, there are now two). There had a been a few kidnappings and robberies of farang, supposedly by leftover ex-Khmer Rouge soldiers now turned mafia and bandits who roamed the area looking for easy pickings and ways to extort money, so the Thai authorities deemed it unsafe for farang to cross there and closed the border crossing to the tourists and expatriates.

While sitting around dangling my legs from the pick-up’s opened tailgate, which I had opened to give myself a seat in the shade dappled sun and available breezes so as not to waste diesel keeping cool in the cab of the truck with the AC on (impossible to sit in there without the AC on, even with the windows open, unless you like saunas) I was visited by a family band of roving wild monkeys. They just suddenly plopped down beside my truck from the overhead foliage and tree branches.

Both sides of the road leading up to the border crossing are lined with newly erected barbed-wire fences, which might pose some small obstacle to illegally immigrating Cambodians, but seem not to deter these migrating simians from going where ever they please. But what might deter these cousins of we humans from foraging around on the ground are the landmines planted in the jungle along both sides of the road, which are advertised with red corrugated plastic signs featuring a white skull and crossbones and the large words “Danger Landmines!” prominently tacked to the trees on both sides of the road. I highly doubt the poor monkeys are literate though.

I was sitting there on the tailgate, trying to catch some small relief from the occasional jungle breezes when the monkeys invaded. It was ridiculously sweltering hot at the time. Hell, it had been brutally hot the whole two weeks I had been there so far. The monkeys wandered around me and I appreciated the diversion they presented me; watching their feeding, and chattering antics. Papa was a fairly large brute, with large vicious looking canines, and a scrotum that prominently hung half way down his legs as he sashayed by. Mama and a couple other young females, sisters, wives, harem, I’m not educated on monkey family groups and dynamics so I have no idea of their structure, strolled past me, staying a respectful distance behind the large male monkey, much as my own wife and family do whenever we walk together. “These must be Thai monkeys coming back from a trip over to see Cambodia.” I thought to myself. There were also three youngsters, how old I have no idea, but they were much smaller than the rest of the band of monkeys, who put on some mock combat playing show that had me laughing, grinning, and chuckling.

As the troop entered the jungle forest beside me I thought again of the landmines and their placement, and wondered exactly how close to the road they were, and if a monkey accidentally tripped one if the explosion might just as well rip me to shreds as I sat there on the truck tailgate as it would the monkey who stepped on it. I hate landmines.

As I sat there pondering this pleasant thought while watching the foraging moneys a nice, strong, cool breeze sprang up from the west. I looked down the road back into Thailand into the distance and spied enormous thunderclouds racing toward Cambodia and the valley below. The tops of these clouds were tinged a warm pink from the setting late afternoon sun. Their bottoms were a dirty grey, flat bottomed, and promising a near future of rain, and probably lots of it. The breeze rushed along the forested land before the impending rain storm tussling the heads of leaves atop the trees, and causing to rain down on the road and truck, and me as well, a deluge of leaves, small branches, and pieces of long dead creeper vines. From somewhere amongst the trees nearby rose an angry piercing wail, not unlike the cry of an American Katydid screeching from the trunk of a willow tree on a hot August afternoon remembered from my youth in Southern New Jersey. These creatures sounded much the same, and were extremely loud and close by. Within seconds the bug’s (I assume it was a bug) call was taken up by at least a half dozen more of its mates from the trees about my vicinity. The sound was enormous and thrilling, and sent chills down my spine.

I hopped down from my perch on the tailgate of my truck and went to get my last remaining bottle of drinking water from the cab. I was sweating profusely still, even with the cooling breeze blowing through the trees surrounding me. It might have been a bit cooler now, but this is all somewhat relative. Instead of 95 degrees Fahrenheit it may have cooled down to 92 or 93.

It was still as hot as the Devil’s left testicle encased in a woolen jockstrap in what passes for summer in hell. That’s fairly warm still. Every drop of liquid I consume here seems to go right to supplying my sweat glands with yet more material to trickle over my already glistening skin.

I felt like a walking salt lick, with no one around wanting to lick me; or at least that I wanted to lick me at the moment.

I doused myself with some of my remaining drinking water and sat on the tailgate again to await the arrival of wife and family.

Tomorrow would be the ritual cleaning of the Buddha and his buddies in the house in the village, the Thai Songkran equivalent of farang ‘spring cleaning’ of the house.

(To be continued)

Cent
(The Central Scrutinizer)

Copyright © Written in the year 2005. All rights reserved by the author.