Everyone, young and old participate in this festival. My favorite was seeing a truck full of elderly Thais holding water guns and buckets of water with mischievous smiles and smirks across their faces. The streets are full of trucks piled with people in the back splashing water on the people walking. Some people wait with hoses or supersoakers on the side of the road and spray the mobile celebrators. You know someone has a massive chunk of ice in their barrel, making their water freezing cold because the screams reach a new decibel level. Sometimes they even have colour in the water so you'll have neon orange or green water flying at your face. So needless to say, it was a riot and we got soaking wet.
The fun was tempered by breaks of touring the area. We'd stop at a temple and overlook the city. Pastor would grab the From dezloeppky.theworldrace.orgcamera, motion for us to get close together and then snap a photo. It was hilarious. Then off to "play the water" as Nat called it and we'd refill our massive barrel of water to go out and soak opposing truck groups like ours (I called them rival gangs), innocent passersby, motorcycles and moped riders. Sometimes a rival gang would pull up beside us and we'd have what I fondly call a "drive by shooting" and attack each other with water. It was awesome.
For another break from the mayhem and madness, Pastor brought us through a small village (where we drove by and soaked the hose and supersoaker toting kids waiting for us and they screamed with joy as we engaged in water wars) to a river. There was a massive possibly sketchy rope and wooden suspension bridge high over the water that we explored. I won't lie, sometimes I wondered if the bridge could take this many people, but I didn't think about it too much. We then fed some shiny rainbow koi and then went swimming in the river with the locals. It was an amazing moment to see everyone, kids and adults, playing in the water, having fun and just enjoying what God made in this beautiful green jungle area. Many times I wondered if this was really my life right now.