Malaysia and Songkran

Let's see, how do I put this.  Malaysia was not fun.  Granted, it allowed me to eat real curry and some lemon chicken (it's shockingly rare that I see chinese food other than sweet and sour chicken and fried rice here), but yeah.  It was really not fun.  The beer was really freaking expensive, and this right here

tasted really bad.  Really.  I'm not sure if it was because I was so hot and the beer is so heavy, but it didn't taste right and made me feel a little ill.  Anywho, here are the rest of the Malaysia pictures.

Not really sure what this building is, I just happened to see the doors and snapped a couple pictures.

The outside of a Buddhist temple.  I really loved the stone dragon columns.  It was really nice to see all the Chinese artwork again.  Thailand, as it turns out, is one of, if not the, only countries to have never been colonized.  So it's culture is really all its own.  Other countries, you can usually see influences of the culture that took em.  Whatever, on to more fun stuff!

Ahhh, Songkran.  I'll warn you all right now, I plan to celebrate this holiday every year for the rest of my life.  Fair warning.  It lasts for three days, most shops are closed (except stuff like 7-11 and the mall) and stepping outside of your house has dangers.  The holiday is officially the Thai new year and this is the day when people would wash the statues of Buddha in their homes or in the temples.  It was customary to collect the water that came off of the statue and pour cups of it down the back of your elders as a blessing.  And monks would rub chalk on people's faces as a blessing.  As holidays tend to do, it's changed a little over the years.  It's now a 3 day long water fight.  Traffic is a madhouse, as the streets are crammed full of pickup trucks, all full of barrels of water and people with bowls and pitchers.  There are squirt guns everywhere, people mix chalk with water and gleefully rub it all over the faces of passerbys.  Kat and I opted to park her scooter at the lot, a short walk from town, and before we'd even made it there, a truck in front of us tossed water all over us.  By the time we got to town, we were already soaked, and stayed that way until getting back to her place at about 5.  Everyone is drinking beer or whiskey straight from the bottle.  Excitingly, in the afternoon across the street, some random long haired Thai guy bolts down the street and around behind a building.  Followed by a cop covered in chalk with his gun out.  Yeeeah.  Even the cops get in on this holiday.  I'm figuring the guy was just a drunken ass, as the cops let him go after making sure he didn't have any weapons.  Yaaaaay.

Here are the pictures I took today.  There's a couple of me, but they're on Kat's camera, so it'll have to wait until she puts them on her computer.

Tomorrow, we're headed to the beach for day 2!  Joy told us that's the best party for Songkran.  Depending on the situation there, I may have pictures.  The only reason I could get away with it today was because when you're near the shops, people won't chuck water at you.  Well, most of the time.