Today I take it easy. I spend some time walking around in Chiang Mai and visiting some sites around town with a tuk tuk. One very unfortunate incidence is that the tuk tuk I am siting in hits hard an old man in the middle of the road. The man falls and is dragged along for some meters. The poor guy is down for about 5 minutes on the middle of the road obviously deeply shocked and probably also with immense pain. Then we manage to lead him to the roadside. An emergency team arrives after some time and takes him away.
It is afternoon when I meet Chingya again. Songkhran is still ongoing and we decide to join the water battle again. This time we take the moto. Chingya has brought a water canon. Obviously, I do not make the same mistake again and this time round I leave my camera at home.
The walls that circle the inner town of Chiang Mai represent a square each side of which is about 2km long. Along the wall are two roads on each side of the moat, leading in circles around the town center in opposite directions. It is here, along the moat and on the road where most water battles take place.
We take the moto and the plan is to ride one time all alongthe moat all around the town. And this is what we do. Chingya rides the bike while I target people on trucks and along the roadside. Obviously, we are frequently on the receiving end since we are an easy target in the slow traffic.
It does not take long until we reallize that some people use very cold water. We note that massive amounts of ice are sold along the road. People on trucks put huge amounts of ice into barrells of water that they refill from the moat, and many people along the road do the same. Once in a while we get a chance to refill our watercanon with icy water. It is fun because you definitely get a reaction from those you target. However, we also take substantial amounts of cold water. After the first halve of the ride we are already pretty cold. This takes about half an hour and now the sun is setting.
By the time we finish the circle around town I am shivering. Even a bath in the dirty but warm moat now seems an appealing prospect and this is what we end up having. Then we go and have food. Later I go to the guesthouse, pack my staff and leave to the airport. Nothing worth mentioning happens on the flight back to Bangkok. I take a taxi from the airport to the Central Point Hotel. By now I am familiar with the way.
I learn at the reception that I was ‘upgraded’ to a room with kitchen at the 23 floor. I don’t need a kitchen but like the view from the balcony.
I arrive in Bangkok late Friday night. My flight to Phnom Penh is on Sunday evening. As it happens, I have some problems with my computer and spent much of the weekend looking for somebody to fix it. Finally I have the battery reconditioned in a shop close by in a shopping mall. Besides, I spend some time going around in Bangkok.
This is some sort of mall for electronic and computer shops and it is here where I have my computer fixed. People sell cheaply all kinds of hard and software, music and electronics.
