The Maverick Tribe

(Ed. note:  The author scores points on a number of fronts with this entry.  In addition to criticizing the Taliban several months before the events of September 11, 2001, he actually managed to employ alliteration on the letter "q".  Bravo! -- MT)

Last Friday morning I woke up and decided that I needed a gun.  Preferably a rifle, something high caliber.  The sophistication and craftsmanship of my weapon would not be as important as its range and its ability to fire off vast quantities of ammunition, which in this case would be… water.

This past weekend Thailand celebrated Songkran, or the Thai New Year, now being the year 2544.  Songkran is also a celebration of water, dispensed from hoses, squirt guns, or simply poured on one’s head from a bucket.  The roots of this tradition are dignified and lofty.  At the turning of the New Year, you are to ceremoniously bathe yourself in flower-scented water and powder yourself dry; this is to signify that you have cleansed and purified your spirit in a fresh start to the coming year.  Songkran, however, is an example of an ancient Thai observance that has been bastardized by heathenistic modern society.  As the Christian West has turned Christmas into an excuse for more enterprise, Thais have turned Songkran into an excuse for more mayhem.

I needed my gun to defend myself.  For three straight days it was impossible to leave the house without getting an utter dousing from locals waiting for the innocent passer-by (preferably a foreigner).  I’d skip off to the 7-Eleven for some groceries, freshly showered and dressed, and return ten minutes later drenched from head to toe and filthy with a chalky-mud that has replaced the original ritual powder.  The onslaught is from all sides: from passing pickup trucks, from street-side shops, from the balconies above.  Supersoaker-style guns are distributed everywhere, as are water cannons and plastic buckets.  Ordinary water pistols will simply not do.

The center of the action is on Kao San Road, the locale for the migrant backpacking set.  It is difficult to describe what the festivities are like there.  Imagine an enormous outdoor college kegger, whose participants have been herded into a narrow street and then drenched by a filthy monsoon.  The locals carry buckets of chalk-mud and insist upon slathering it on your face as they wish you a happy new year.  There is absolutely nothing you can do to avoid getting systematically terrorized, except arm yourself and fight back.

That’s the first day.  This year Songkran lasted four straight days, with a few fanatics extending the chaos even longer.  I wondered aloud to some Thais about whether having water fights might get tiresome after 24 or 48 hours of nonstop showers.  All I got in return were confused looks.  By Day Two, however, I realized that the jarring effect of getting blasted with water at room temperature begins to wear off, even for me.  The next logical step?  Ice, of course. 

Bucket after bucket of ice is trucked in to Kao San Road and diluted in tubs to give your ammo a bit more of a kick.  Get used to freezing water careening against the back or your neck; more than one prankster is bound to get you good.  Not even the police are immune.

Occasionally you will encounter the Angry Tourist.  The Angry Tourist is some white man or woman who holds futile notions that they can avoid the filth.  They glower their way down the street, and, to those of us who are already drenched, come off as the worst kind of party pooper.  I actually did feel a touch of sympathy for the Angry Tourists.  Imagine taking a vacation and travelling thousands of miles to the Land of Smiles.  After a twelve-hour flight, you take a taxi to your swanky hotel.  You step out of the cab and are greeted by a beautiful Thai woman, smiling just like you’ve seen in all the brochures.  Then after a traditional Thai curtsey, she slaps your cheeks with mud and pours a glass of ice down your shirt.  “Happy New Year!” she’ll cry, to which you are expected to reply, “Thank you!”

Oh well, you’re just going to have to live with it, this is Bangkok after all.  If you wanted to stay dry and ignored, you should have gone to Afghanistan.  In Afghanistan there are no marauding gangs of gleeful hoodlums packing chill.  There are, however, plenty of government-sanctioned thugs abusing women and blowing up ancient statues.  Call me quixotic, call me quaint, call me a love-and-peace queer, but I can’t help thinking that if the world had more senseless bouts with water guns, people wouldn’t be so eager to deploy the real variety.

I’ve stopped reading the newspapers.  Regional news is just too grim and monotonous.  Most international news is essentially the same story: someone’s screwing over someone else, and the screw-ees are mad as hell.  Then they get armed.  The Singaporean Chinese marginalize the Malays, who can’t stand the Hindus.  Indonesia is busy playing Musical Ethnic Clashes.  There’s vast corruption in India.  There’s vast corruption everywhere. The Vietnamese, a society that’s been taking it on the chin from foreign meddlers throughout recorded history, are discriminating against their tribal minorities.  So the tribes get themselves some M-16’s.  For all I know, the tribesmen, after a long day of being oppressed by the government, take their anger out by kicking their dogs around.  The dogs are probably sniffling at each other, planning their revolt.

The fragile Philippine government is cracking down militarily on threats from all sides, from an ousted ex-President’s cartel to a Muslim terrorist group.  The other day I sat down to my morning coffee to the headline, “[Philippine President Gloria Macapagal] Arroyo: Surrender or Be Pulverized”.  Um… another cup, please.  Thank God China’s press is restricted; I don’t even want to know what goes on there.

Then of course there’s the Great and Majestic U.S. of A.  Like it or not, our forces are here, and don’t touch us unless you want to get creamed.

I long for American news media, wringing its hands over the safety of PlaySkool tricycles and playing voyeur to the tawdry sex lives of public figures.  (I remember what you did, Marv Albert.  Don’t think that I’ve forgotten, you pervert.)  And oh yeah, some brown people are killing each other on the other side of the world.  As for the latest developments in the Jon Benet Ramsey case…

How’s Oprah’s diet coming along these days, anyway?

Not that America doesn’t have it’s own racial strife to report, but let’s face it: most mainstream Americans are disinterested in things like gang violence unless it involves a rap star they can recognize from MTV.

Back here in Thailand, we’re soaking wet and groping each other.  That’s not to imply that this place is a Third World Woodstock (redundancy?), because it isn’t.  Thais can be as classist and racist as anybody.  And I suppose I should mention that over 600 people were killed during Songkran’s events, mostly from alcohol-related motorcycle accidents.  The inadvertent carnage notwithstanding, there’s an important lesson here.  To all you gun-toters who think that your firearm gives you a macho-injection, how about a fresh squirt of freezing water in the ear?  To all you pretention pimps who think you can cordon off social boundaries with your clothes and jewelry, let’s see how your Jag looks slathered in mud!  To all of you who are caught up in what you think things should be instead of what they are, the message is apt: Chill out!

In light of all this, it’s interesting to reflect on how little armed conflict exists in Thailand’s history, relative to other nations in the region, and in the world for that matter.  Subsequently, and admittedly, I also wonder about this country’s military readiness.  The last army enlist I met was busy smoking methamphetamine vapor in preparation for a night out at the gay bars.  “Boy”, I believe his name was.  I don’t know if I should feel safe living in a society whose national security is in the hands of speed freaks named “Boy”.

Just in case, I’m keeping my supersoakers under the kitchen sink, near the ammunition.

The quality of my classroom environment has dropped at a shocking rate. The students are just plain bored of the same room, same teacher, same lousy supplies, same games. It takes a while to prepare something new, which they get tired of after about 5 minutes. I thought the spelling relay race was a great game upon which I could harness their physical energy for something productive. But half the class simply refused to play, preferring instead to whack each other with rulers. Perhaps a ruler-whacking game would go over well, for every word incorrectly spelled you get one right in the ear from Teacher.

Teacher is certainly ready to institute some negative reinforcement. Previously, the uprisings were somewhat random and unfocused, but now they've begun to organize and mobilize. The insurgents have chosen their leader, and the number of Teacher-sympathizers is dwindling rapidly as more and more students defect to the rebel organization. I've appointed a liaison to the people (the Thai-speaking manager) in a last-ditch effort to peacefully restore order, but the uprisings continue. Perhaps they feel like "Another Brick on the Wall". Perhaps they're right. When I arrive on Monday morning I'm half expecting to find a human chain of dissenters handcuffed to the hall banister and blocking the door to the classroom. I may have to declare a state of emergency and institute martial law if relations do not improve.

Okay, so I've been watching a bit too much CNN World News.