Thai Town in Los Angeles is home to more Thai people outside of Thailand than any other place on earth. So, what better place to have a mini-Songkran festival?

No water, no splashing, no crazy drunks. It's a really, really toned down version of Songkran but it's nice because they close off an entire section of Hollywood Blvd and local merchants come out and cook up some great food.

I had to interesting meet-ups. The first was the ex-girlfriend of a good, good buddy of mine who is now living in Japan. I don't think I've seen her since 2005 or 2006. What a surprise when I heard someone calling my name and it was her.

Even better, now she's regional manager for Singha so finding Singha in Los Angeles is no longer going to be an issue!

Second interesting person I ran into was Paiboon Publishing superstar,

Benjawan Poomsan Becker. I saw the Paiboon booth and wanted to check out what books they had and I look at the lady running the booth, look at her author photo on one of the books, look back at the lady running the booth, look back at the author photo . . . "Excuse me, but aren't you Khun Benjawan?" She smiled and told me that it was indeed her. We chatted a bit about some of her products, especially the Thai-English dictionary that I have on my iPhone and how useful I've found it.

All in all, not quite Bangkok Songkran but the entire day was a lot of fun and everyone was having a great time.
 

My friend Arisa who I ran into.


















 

I usually go to the Songkran celebrations at the Buddhapadipa Temple in London. Best place to get Thai food. Looks lot warmer in your pics though.

Damn!! Thought it was next weekend. Would of loved to have gone. Thai town is a great little LA place to go.

Looks great fun! And not as messy!

@Sky: They might be doing Songkran at Wat Thai this coming weekend. Someone said something along the lines that the wat and Thai Town try not to overlap their festivities so people can attend both. Not sure if that's true but you could google around for more info.

I tried browsing around the Wat Thai site but it's not easy. Even when you set your language preferences to English half the page is still in Thai. They mention Songkran and April 8 but not sure if that was last year or this year.

Thanks Bill, I'll check it out.

Where's all the water?