It’s been quite an interesting start to life in Bangkok, to say the least.

To recap: I did some apartment hunting during the week in Victory Monument and Chatujak Park, ultimately deciding on a classy place called Poonchock Mansion in Chatujak, both based on price and proximity to my TEFL course. Before I could even put the deposit down, I was off to Kuala Lumpur for the weekend on a visa run, where I inadvertently escaped the violent clashes between the red shirt protesters and Thai troops.

I flew back into Bangkok on Monday morning unsure of what to expect. Various media outlets were making the incident out to be a bloodbath, urging tourists to flee the area or reconsider their vacations. The Twitter feeds and blogs of friends living here, however, suggested otherwise. Naturally, I was anxious to get back and see the protests firsthand and talk to locals, protesters and tourists alike. After getting all set up in P.Mansion (my apartment is huge…and cheap!), I headed down to Khao San Road with intentions of getting a refund on my plane ticket and seeing the red shirts’ camp and results of the clashes. What I didn’t expect was that Songkran, the Thai New Year, had started a day early on Khao San and I would come home soaked.

Songkran is a three-day holiday from April 13-15. Its most obvious celebration — aside from visiting wats, paying respect to the family and cleansing the Buddha — is the throwing of water. It has since evolved into one of the biggest water fights in the world. People line the streets armed with Super Soakers, garden hoses and buckets of clay to smear on faces of passersby.

Monday was spent observing the water fight from the opposite side of the barricade, where the red shirts looked on and visited the memorials set up for those who died on the end of Khao San that weekend. Bullet holes in the walls of street corner buildings have been circled and labeled. Food, flags, flowers and loose change lay in place of the bodies, one of which is reported to be the Japanese Reuters photojournalist. I was approached by various red shirt-clad protesters, eager to talk to me about the situation and find out why I wasn’t on the other side of the barricade with the other water gun-touting tourists. The conversation regarding the protests and government is pretty much unavoidable no matter where you go. Last Saturday’s clashes was the worst political violence the country has seen since 1992 and everyone — from my cab drivers to landlady — wants to know what I, as a foreigner living in the city, think about them.

I’m big on observations, making parallels and pointing out contrasts in the places I visit, so to see the celebration at the top of the road and the anger and lives lost on the other end was a pretty significant deal to me.

I’m still keeping my eye on the situation between the red shirts and the government. The reds have consolidated their protests sites back to one in the main commercial shopping district as they prepare for what they’ve called the “final battle.” Protesters are still demanding that Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva dissolve parliament and hold new elections. The red shirts have rejected the government’s offer to dissolve parliament in six months and Abhisit is still rejecting calls to step down. Meanwhile, a vote in the Election Commission passed 4:1 during the week to dissolve the government on unlawful donations and will next move to the Attorney General and the Constitution Court. There is a PAD rally (yellow shirts) planned for Sunday and many “no colors, just love for the King” protesters have already started to congregate around Victory Monument.

As for my Songkran celebrations, they’ve been fantastic. On Tuesday, I ventured back down to Khao San Road with bloggers Cody McKibben, Nikki Scott, Sean Ogle, Gary Arndt, Matt Kepnes and Jodi Ettenberg and our every intention of celebrating with a Super Soaker. We had an excellent water fight and came home soaked and covered in talcum powder. Even the nightclubs take part, I learned on Wednesday night, dumping buckets of water on the crowds down in Sukhumvit. It’s become impossible to walk down the street without being smeared in clay by good-natured, cheek-pinching Thais and being squirted at with water guns by teens on the BTS.