Songkran runs, does the water matter all that much to us? NO

Songkran is an interesting time of year in Thailand. Most of the country completely shuts down so that all of Thailand, and from what I hear to a lessor extent neighboring countries as well, in order to have a giant water war of sorts. Here in Chiang Mai they go on for a bit too long with it as for around a week it is impossible to stay dry if you go almost anywhere in public.

For the first day or two I have some fun with it but by day 3 if it isn't little children that are doing the water tossing, I start to get a bit upset about it. A few years ago I was walking with a computer, which was a stupid idea on my part anyway during that time of year, and someone shot water at me over a fence with a hose. I got extremely upset with this person. I just left my computer in the sun for a while and then was very anxious when I turned it on. Thankfully there was no damage but this is one of the downsides of the holiday. Put your phones in a water-tight bag!

As far as the Hash House Harriers are concerned, we do not cease operations for any holiday, not even Christmas or New Year's Day, so yeah, we are still doing our thrice weekly events.

Out in the jungle where we normally do our runs we don't normally have a great deal of water at our disposal that isn't intended for drinking and we don't want to waste that. But during Songkran we always do one or two runs that are closer to the city center and normally will even do an urban run and all of us end up getting soaked by the people that are not part of our group but will just throw water on everyone that passes.

This particular run has to be done as a tight knit group because our usual path creation of putting flour on the ground to mark the trail will not work since the entire city is wet. So mostly this is just a walk between various bars where we stop at each one for a drink and then move on.

If the person knows where the next bar is they are free to run ahead and be a FRB (Front Running Bastard) if they choose but just like always, there is no prize for getting there first other than being the first one to drink a beer. Running is ill-advised when your socks and shoes are wet unless you are the kind of person that enjoys blisters.

One of our trails was actually perfect because it started and finished in an urban area with access to running water for the festivities but the real trail took place in the jungle. We don't really like doing runs on cement so this location is actually perfect. This was a Rambo trail, so it was and was meant to be difficult. At around 8k it might not seem like much to people that exercise on a regular basis, but to us 60 year old's this if far enough.

Another run that we have planned is almost entirely in an urban area and we fully expect to get completely soaked by the children in the area as well as their drunk parents. This is fine. Since we are sweating like mad anyway getting some cool water thrown at you isn't really the worst that can happen.

The HHH stops for no holidays! So if you are in the Chiang Mai area for the Songkran festival anyway, feel free to meet up with us for one of our runs. Their will be slight delays in getting to the locations because of normally heavy traffic on these holiday days, so we might end up spending more time that usual in transit. Check our official website for full information

On On!