Sonkran

Pictures of Sonkran

The typical group for Sonkran loaded up in the back of a pickup

Yesterday, was the beginning of the Thai new year celebration in Chiang Mai. It consists of people riding in the back of pick up trucks with buckets of water and dousing those on the street who also are armed with squirt guns, pails of water, or just a hose. Water seems to be plentiful around here because no one seems to think twice about leaving the hose on all day even though it's supposedly the dry season. People standing on the street throwing water target the pickup trucks with people in the back, people walking, and those on motorbikes. I was in a van hah so I was shielded from all of this. It's quite amusing actually and seems like a lot of fun. Drinking is also involved and I saw many bottles with dark liquors being drank in the back of pickups. I took some pictures of this and also the parades that were in the street, carrying floats with Buddha on them, which people would then approach and pour flower scented water on the Buddha.

One of the Floats

The government building next to Ban San Faan appears to have many many many parties. Every night, I hear loud music from their direction. Apparently, it is more play and less business over there :) Averil and I took a walk down our street today--the people who saw us were very happy to stare as we walked by almost falling off their motorbikes...and we got come here's from a couple of men drinking in their garage. Westerners are stared at a lot here--despite the many tourists, Thais apparently can't get enough of staring at a white person.
Yesterday, we had a visit from the baby who will soon take his place at Ban San Faan as the youngest, displacing Abby, 4, from that position. His name is Sammy and he is incredibly cute. He never cried the whole time he was here and seemed happy to be stared at and to play with the other 17 children who live here. It seems that he'll fit in nicely. He is 8 months, and DoDo (one of the nannies) said he seemed really skinny to her. He looked fine to me, but I seriously can never remember what babies are supposed to look like or be able to do at certain ages.

Today, we went to the Carrefour mall to let the kids play on the arcade games and various toys and then to KFC. This was a birthday celebration for the two who were born in April, Paul who will be 6 at the end of the month, and Cherri who will be 7 tomorrow. We saw a procession for Sonkran in the mall as well. Averil thought one of the women, who was being held up by men with no shirts and those wrap skirt like things on, was a he-she. Apparently, there is a lot of that here since Buddhist's are very tolerant and operations for changing sex are readily available in Bangkok.

Paul on one of the rides. He always has the best camera smile.
I will post more pictures soon!

Love,
Brittany