New year's boobs

Eee Gads, two weeks have flown by already and my ability to write has been lost in the passage of time. Boo hoo. Part of my cramped style is due to a recent trip, I went up to Chiang Mai for the the Thai New Year.

The festival of Songkran is the best public holiday in the world with hoards of people going home to get tanked up and drive their respective vehicles drunk around town. About thirty percent of accidents are caused by drunk driving. According to the Bangkok Post the number of deaths during the holiday dropped by 25 percent. No doubt the decreasing amount of accidents is due to Thai citizens getting more savvy with their motoring skills, probably because of driving school apps on their iphones.
While initially a religious holiday the week long fest has morphed into an elongated party during the hottest part of the year. Things have gotten even more lecherous of late with three young Thai girls, ages 13, 14, and 16 taking off their tops in the Silom section of Bangkok. The area by day is host to hoards of white collar workers, and when the sun sets the night market of Patpong, one of the original red light districts of Bangkok, flourishes, almost as much as nearby Silom soi 4 the Gay ghetto of the City of Angels. Of course the young girls were fined, a hefty 500 baht and were scolded publicly by the moralist demigods of the Thai government. Hilariously the didactic leaders from the Ministry of Culture website had a picture of some good old Thai boobies as part of their masthead.

Wanting to front that Thailand is still pure and wholesome certainly might inflate the windbags that make up the Thai Tourist authority but really who doesn't come to Thailand to be a sexpat? Isn't that what the spectacle of Thai culture is? Whores, and hot weather? Oh yeah, and Muay Thai (whores of a different kind).
Back to my travels... I, and a handful of good friends took an overnight bus up to the northern Thailand town. My friend had to procure the tickets in haste as everyone around the country returns home for the holiday. Bangkok empties out and becomes a ghost town. The bus that we took was posh. Each seat had its own screen to view movies, play classic sega genesis games, and listen to banging beats. Of the four of us riding up together each of us chose to watch "Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief," which evidently was a far better choice than Vin Diesel in Fast and the Furious 4. A good friend housed us in a teak abode outside of the city. Teak is a dense and beautiful mahogany wood that was used a lot back in the day. The construction of my friend's place was quite beautiful and fit the laid back green city of Chiang Mai quite well.

The city is quite popular for the holiday due to the moat that surrounds the city center. Hoards of people dragged water from the moat to dump on people. I accidentally got a mouthful of the foul liquid and am sure to die of dysentery any day now. Poo. Poo. My group spent two days playing with water which while fun was also quite tiring. Especially as some of the water was chilled with huge blocks of ice. The water was made cold in huge garbage buckets that held the blocks bought at 100 baht per piece.

I returned on an equally posh bus which provided more leg room and a constantly running series of Thai music videos and comedy.