The Fourth Day of Songkran
By Richard Barrow 
Saturday 16th April, 2005 | 329 words | Category: Festivals, Songkran | 1 feedback »
The enthusiasm for waterfights is certainly slowing down now on what is the fourth day. I took this picture on a street corner this afternoon. There were only a handful of pickup trucks roaming the streets and a few kids alongside roads staging ambushes against unsuspecting people. They say that some parts of the country only have waterfights for one day. Other places it goes on for a full week. It was in the newspaper today that the government are planning on zoning next year to help curb some of the out-of-control antics of a few drunks and perverts. I am not exactly sure how setting up special areas for the waterfights will bring it back to its roots of clean fun. What is the point in bringing in new laws when they cannot police the present ones. Maybe if they were stricter with underage drinking and teenagers riding motorcycles without a license then we wouldn't have so many problems - and deaths.
This afternoon I drove past Wat Chai Mongkon in Paknam when I noticed that they must have recently had their sandcastle building competition. Shame I missed this one as there must have been at least 100 hundred sand pagodas. I had driven around Samut Prakan earlier in the week trying to find billboards with information about what was happening at various temples. However, not all of them advertise. I will make a note of this one for next year. Can you guess what the kids are doing in the picture below? Yes, they are looking for money buried in the pagodas. I asked one kid and he said he had found 20 one baht coins in the last two hours! This reminds me of the Loy Krathong festival. People put a few coins in their krathongs for good luck. They then float these on the water. After they have gone (and sometimes while they are watching in horror) some of the street kids swim out to steal the money!
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