Anybody Else Sick From Songkran?

[bonzersmom]

Not to mention Wial's disease

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/oct/26/weils-disease-andy-holmes

And several types of parasites that eat their way into your inner organs.

http://www.thaivisa.com/forum/topic/150224-bilharzia-water-born-disease-in-thailand/

How many cases of these diseases have been reported?

Good question!!! Does Thailand have a contagious disease reporting system? Is it available publicly? I'm going to assume they have the equivalent of the CDC and if my fevered brain is still firing on a few synapses I vaguely remember something with the CDC working with some thai organization. I don't remember if it was an NGO or part of the thai government. Gotta worry a tad about it if it was government. Hurts the tourism if you report outbreaks of typhus, cholera, dengue. Probably that's just my american paranoia speaking.

[bonzersmom]

Happy Days! Lets throw very dirty water around that rats live in 365 days a year then wonder why you get sick!

Still. I mustnt be a killjoy, I guess its a happy memory from Songkran to end up with Cholera, Pinkeye, Unidentified skin infections and any number of other diseases!!

As you take your antibiotics and sit on the loo with the squits I m sure it was all worth while!!

believe me when I say I SOOO did NOT party. We hired a car and driver to take us out of town to various local excursions for Songkran, Doi Inthanon, Queen Sirikit Gardens, Doi Suthep, Golden triangle, Ayuttayah (SP?) Day 2 Hubby pulled a muscle in his back and had to stay home in bed so day 3 I went out early in the morning to make a supplies run. Some expletive deleted hit me in the face with a bucket of water, I live 2 blocks north of the moat, it was on the moat, if you are near the moat nobody bothers with hoses they just use moat water. Next year we are leaving the country.

[bonzersmom]

Very bad dose of Pink eye (Dta Daeng in Thai) dont know why we call it pink eye and they call it Red eye, either way I have both viral and Bacterial Red eye and so far have had ir for 9 days. Just starting to show signs of improvement after several sleepless nights and four visits to the hospital!

This as a result of being thrown bodily into a pond at my local bar!

I really don't think that is a songkran event.

Actually it probably is. Pink eye is extremely contagious and can be water born. If midasthailand has kids and they aren't sick, and people around him aren't sick then best guess would be the pond. I don't even want to think about some of the local ponds I've seen even here in CM. The creature from the black lagoon would LOVE those feces, chemical ridden swamps.

[bonzersmom]

I gave up playing Songran on the moat a couple of years ago after getting a face full of the swamp water directly in my face, vomiting and the sh#ts for 2 days.

Find its better to go out in the real Thai communities that don't have idiots purposely aiming for your eyes and ears with a high powered squirt gun!

The thais in Chaing Mai were very courteous. If I waved my hand no and shook my head they didn't throw water on me it was the drunk college kids from every place else. They don't even know what songkran is about, they just go PAAARRRTTTYYYY!!!! By the end of Songkran (driving in from Doi Inthanon) I was starting to see a lot of pissed off and tired of the whole thing Thais. Wednesday morning walking home from siriwatana (apologies for spelling) market I ran into a Thai businessman who somebody had doused with a bucket of water. He had on a nice shirt, tie, good pants, and was soaked with dirty water. He was FURIOUS!!! Screaming at the top of his lungs!!! Totally un-thai like. I was shocked and scared of him. He was so angry he looked unhinged!!!

My guess is that the regular business people, retail stores, the nicer restaurants who lose business because people don't want to go out during songkran eventually will get pissed off enough. Then there will be enough public pressure by the people who matter so that the drunken orgy is brought under control. You are already seeing signs of this in Bangkok where the cops were arresting people who threw water on motorcyclists. The fatalities during songkran are double or triple any other time of the year.

As the members here mention smaller villages have fun without getting abusive.

[candypants]

sick as a dog, but the 18 hours of hard partying and dancing had nothing to do with it

Hey, what happened to bullet proof? Or was that only before you turned 25?

when i was 25 it was 30+ hours easy, sometimes days.

this time around it was one day of songkran,one day off and a dinner party that got away from us and turned into a full on pants shaker.

now im only bulletproof until the party ends.

then i pay dearly

[MESmith]

Does anyone celebrate Songkran along the "black canal" east of the old city?

[WinnieTheKhwai]

No; it's VERY hard to get to the water to refill the barrels.

A relatively popular road away from the moat could be the old Lamphun road. Lots of shade due to the tall trees.

Personally I don't think there is too much wrong with the moat water; it gets treated prior to the festival. Kids swim in it, also outside of Songkran.

Some bars get water from very dirty wells, that seems a more likely source of nasty stuff.

[WinnieTheKhwai]

But I did, of course, try. Took an insane amount of effort.

And I think this is before more work was done on the banks, making it near impossible now.

EDIT: I just realized you said canal *east* of the city. Thought you meant the Canal Road. So no, assuming you mean Mae Kha canal, that of course isn't suitable (it's borderline an open sewer), even if there was easy access to the water, which there isn't. Other places that get people celebrating and splashing water over Songkran are Huay Tueng Thao and Ob Khan.

[ianf]

Hospitals are always busy after Songkrang..

Last year I had terrible skin infections, few years before that it was Red Eye

Throwing raw sewerage around is probably not very healthy.

Some of the kids I work with had awful skin infections after Songkran. They know what caused it too.....

[MESmith]

EDIT: I just realized you said canal *east* of the city. Thought you meant the Canal Road. So no, assuming you mean Mae Kha canal, that of course isn't suitable (it's borderline an open sewer), even if there was easy access to the water, which there isn't. Other places that get people celebrating and splashing water over Songkran are Huay Tueng Thao and Ob Khan.

I know it's an open sewer. Just wondering whether folk still treated it as a water source for songkran. There's enough stupidity going on in the city (throwing buckets of water at motorbikes on main roads for eg) So why not using this canal. It wouldn't surprise me