It all happened towards the end of my 3 month stay with my new girlfriend in north eastern Thailand, also known as Issan. We had been installing a sprinkler system in a field of Pumpkins and it had all gone pretty well except for one or two of the sprinklers were not working as well as the others and me being a Virgo I had to get them working the same as the rest of them. Now I should explain that the actual sprinklers were fitted to uprights about 1mtr tall so as to get a decent coverage and they were supported by stakes. There was this particular one that had not been spraying the water and the water was puddling around the stake, having turned off the water I went to work on it to get it to turn and so spray like the rest, when I thought it was probably ready to go I turned on the water again and Bingo it worked a treat and was spraying just like all the others, as I was watching the stake slowly started to lean over due to the soaking it had had previously and to this day I don't know what I was thinking of but I went over to catch it before it fell right over. Well you can imagine what happened, I got soaked, anyway I fixed the stake so it stayed upright and thought to myself that it was a good job I was working alone but when I turned round to escape the spray low and behold the whole episode had been witnessed by Keaw my Thai girlfriend and she was laughing her socks off and when she finally stopped long enough to speak she said in her best English “ You have Songkran alone” and carried on laughing. For those who don't know Songkran is a Thai water festival where it is customary to throw water over each other and during the 3 days everyone is out and about doing just that, some even have large water tanks in the back of their pick up trucks and drive around with a load of teenagers in the back soaking everyone as they drove past, all done in the best possible taste.
I had just about lived that down when later that week I found myself lying in a heap at the side of our bed, having been woken up by cracking my head on the wall as I tumbled out of bed and as I looked up there was Keaw standing over me asking “What do you do you fall out bed, why?”, when it is obvious that I have nothing worse than a huge bruise on my arm she kicks off again “Yesterday you Songkran alone now you fall out of bed, why?” and then she starts laughing at my misfortune again. Every now and then Keaw would ask “ Why you Songkran alone, why you fall out of bed” she also took great pleasure telling people in the village about my mishaps and they all had a good laugh at my expense.
This video shows how Songkran is celebrated.
On the Friday of that particular week Matt, Keaw's son, wanted to have a party at the farm with some of his mates that had a group and they were coming to play at this party. Keaw thought that this would be a good time to have a load of her friends come round and see her Farang boy friend, Farang being the name given by Thais to any non Thai persons.
The day turned out to be quite hectic and there was a lot of coming and going getting everything arranged for the party, Keaw's brother came round to fix up some lighting outside and tables and chairs drafted in from the house in the village. Some of Keaw's friends from the village came to help prepare food. What started out as being some of Matt's friend coming to play music and party a little this was turning into a big party for friends and family.
Come the evening and people started turning up with their bottles of Leo and Singha beer, one or two of them I had met before but mostly they were all strangers to me.
I probably should explain here that the day before we had had several
lorry loads of soil delivered.
and a tractor come to spread it all out to make a driveway right up to the house with a decent area for parking the pickup, this was where the group were setting up their instruments and speakers and the tables were set out on the new driveway.
Everything was going off fine, I was sitting at one of the tables with one of Keaw's friends that I had met before and could speak a little English and a few others that I had not seen before. Anyway the group were quite good and I was enjoying some of my favourite Thai beer, Beer Chang, and trying to understand what people were saying as they tried out their best English on me. It was getting on a bit and some of the guest were getting ready to leave when all of sudden the legs of my chair sunk into the freshly made driveway and tipped me out sideways onto the ground at first people were shocked and tried to help me up and then they started to cover their mouths with their hands and began to laugh at me floundering to get up with as much dignity as I could muster and try to point out that it was the chairs fault that I had ended up on my butt on the ground and nothing to do with the beer. After I had managed to get myself upright I repositioned my chair and sat down trying to look cool about it all but inside I was wishing that I could just disappear and pretend it had never happened, I was so embarrassed at making such a scene in front of all these friends of Keaw.
It seems that many of the people that witnessed my embarrassment that evening and had also heard about my “Songkran alone” and falling out of bed mishaps and still refer to them when they see Keaw, and she keeps reminding me about them when I call her up on the phone. I don't suppose I will ever live this down. It was certainly very embarrassing at the time but now it is a thing of great amusement for Keaw and myself and some of her friends as well.
