Happy New Years!

It's New Year's you say?

In countries that depend on the rainy season to grow rice, it apparently is.  Though I am working 7 days out of the week to afford to go to Japan, I have been granted a week off for the Khmer New Years' celebration.

I have decided to spend part of this week in Thailand, picking up a few necessities.  That's what expats do in Cambodia--they go to Thailand when they want useful Western goods, like clothes that fit, McDonalds, air-conditioning, advanced paperback books, medical treatment, or pretty much anything else beyond the creature comforts of Swensen's ice cream and Ciprofloxacin.

Needing at least 3 of the 5 items listed above, I got on the quickest night bus to the border (I've had to add many pages to my passport solely because I've done this so often that the visa pages are all used up).

For whatever reason, despite the fact that the New Year is a lunar holiday celebrated by all people in the rice-dependent Southeast Asian region, I somehow forgot that Thailand is also celebrating New Year's.

It's a lot different over here--literally the entire city becomes some sort of outdoor orgy of water and mud and silly drunk people flinging themselves and each other into it.

Hooray!! What fun!, you are thinking.

While this is normally the sort of thing I get into, it's awfully annoying having to hide from water-and-mud snipers behind cars when you're carrying 20 shopping bags and didn't bring any spare clothes to get wet and muddy.  This is probably the reason they no longer do this in Cambodia--all the foreigners complained!

The nice thing, though, is that there are all kinds of "Songkran sales", where everything is 30-50% off for the New Year.  Man, did I luck out on that one.  Also worth noting that the general populace seemed happy, affirming, and high-spirited for once in the entire  50-or-so times I've visited this place.  (Generally, the city is quite stuck-up and inhuman, even degrading, if I may be so bold as to cast a judgement Bangkokward.)  I don't think I've ever been happier to be here.