It is blessedly quiet here after Hanoi, and even my last stay in Bangkok where the sound of traffic was relentless, except at dawn and dusk when all the dogs in the neighbourhood howl for about 5 minutes.
I arrived in the middle of Thai new year, Songkran, which includes, aside from visits to monks and family elders, a three-day country-wide water fight. The first time the GF and I came to Thailand about 15 years ago, we had buckets of water thrown at us and his spectacles got knocked into a canal (the assailant immediately dove in after them and
found them). This time the authorities are stricter so water battles are less of a free-for-all and are are restricted to specific streets. I didn’t get soaked though I did see people carrying terrifying-looking water guns.
That visit took place during the height of the Yellow Shirt/ Red Shirt disputes. Every second person in Thailand wore either yellow and red and I, in my naivete, just accepted it as it was. Since then that divide in dress has never been there.
This time, there is an election coming up. The streets are lined with candidate posters, all very standardised: a white vertical banner with a 3/4 portrait, some text in Thai below, and in the top left or right-hand corner, the party logo. Unable to read Thai, and with different candidates for every constituency, the posters look indistinguisable as the logos are all very similar as well, with some variation on the flag colours. Very different from the distinctive Malaysian ones and very different also from the clear visual identity of red and yellow shirts back in the day.