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I put this in general since it applies anywhere where there are crowds at Songkran, but this happened on Silom Road in Bangkok.

This post is just to describe to other people how it can happen, so you are more likely to realise in time, if it happens to you.

I had one of those waterproof pouches with cash and a phone in, in a velcro pocket on the front of my shorts.

The whole thing took about 10-15 seconds. You have to picture a big crowd, with not much space to move. You can walk but not walk fast. You definitely can't run. At first I didn't really suspect anything. 2 or 3 youngish Thai guys were in front of me and they weren't moving forwards even though there was some space in front of them. But this is normal in Thailand right? People have little spacial awareness here and everybody is enjoying themselves, so I just wait. This lasts about 10 seconds and I start to politely try and push past them. They don't let me do that and there are people to either side who, at the time, I think are people just like me, trying to get past. But they aren't, they are in on it. Then in an instant, the crowd around me breaks up, and that's partly what makes me realise something is wrong, it's an immediate and coordinated dispersal - if they had just kept up their act a little longer, or dispersed gradually, maybe I wouldn't have any idea. So this is the first time I take my mind away from Songkran and think to myself, what's going on here? My senses are heightened and something in the back of my head thinks, did I just feel my pocket getting lighter, and moving slightly? I check my pocket and sure enough it's empty.

We're talking only a second or two after they've all split, I'm now fully aware of what's happened and I grab the nearest one to me, she's small and shaped a bit like a christmas tree. I think she's the one who took it, but I think she passed it to somebody else as soon as she took it. I could be wrong though. My immediate reaction is that it's gone, there's no way I'm getting this back because there were at least half a dozen of them that scattered, and I don't know who has it.

She starts pointing somewhere else and about 20 seconds later another foreigner who she was pointing in the direction of, hands it back to me, he says it was on the floor.

I think that the group had seen that I'd grabbed one of them, and either she, or whoever she passed it to, just dropped it and cut their losses to avoid me dragging her off to the police (lots of police around there by the way but they just sit around at equally spaced intervals, leaving the area in between free for these people to operate).

I think they bottled it. They had it and I didn't know who had it. They'd already won.

To be fair to the police there are signs around prominent points e.g. BTS exits warning about pickpockets. These people operate in groups - bigger groups than you think, you cannot be aware of who is around you all of the time, you need to take precautions before it happens. Don't take much cash. Don't take your phone unless you have to. Wear that pouch thing around your neck. If you are drunk you have no chance. There's no way if I'd have had even a couple of beers my mind would be thinking clear enough to notice a slight movement in my pocket.

I also noticed afterwards; this woman and at least one of the others had no gun. Who goes to the biggest water fight in the world with no water gun?