The Songkran Zombies have started to invade - Water Fights, CrossFit, Camera Repair and Zombies.

I didn't want to leave the house today, I was perfectly content watching Django Unchained from the safety of my room.  But then I received a call.  I had dropped my beloved Canon S95 camera the other day, thinking it was completely ruined.  By dropped, I actually mean, I tripped and fell while walking and taking a photo and landed with all of my weight on the extended lens of my camera.  To my delight Denchai, the camera repair shop here in Chiang Mai was able to preform a miracle and asked me to come pick it up.

I knew that this weekend, starting tomorrow was the start of Songkran...Thai New Years.  But I didn't realize that some of the madness was already starting.

Riding my motorbike into town to pick up the camera, I saw that some people were already starting to become infected. On the side of the road people had water guns and buckets of water, wetting people as they walked by.  Luckily, I was on my scooter and was able to dodge most of the madness.

I knew that for the next 4-6 days most businesses would be closed and even to go and get food would become an adventure.  I booked a hostel in the center of town hoping that I will meet a good team of reinforcements and be able to ward off attackers by having the biggest water guns possible.  It's funny that some people travel across the world to come to this epic event, while others who have lived in Chiang Mai for a few years or more, actually take this time to leave the country before the madness begins.

I for one am going to embrace it, eat, sleep and live with my water pistol next to me at all times and party like it's the third New Years party I've been to so far in 2013...which it actually is.

Weaving through traffic, in between cars and sometimes making illegal turns, I made it back to my apartment relatively dry with my fixed camera in tact.  They only charged me 950 baht ($32US) to repair my camera, which I thought was a steal.  I was ready to pay up to $200US to fix it, as buying a new one would be double that, and wouldn't be easy to find here.  On my way back I also picked up a bag of mixed salad for 23 baht (77cents) and a grilled chicken leg for 30 baht ($1US).

Tomorrow it official begins.  Part of me is a big nervous for the madness that is coming up, but at the same time i'm excited.  I had an excellent week working out at the new CrossFit Chiang Mai gym and made some personal bests.  This morning I managed to bench press 100kg (222lbs) five times.  People have always asked me how much I bench, but honestly, before today I never really did.  Sure I'd do it at the gym sometimes, but never with proper form, scaling or even a good spotter.  Today we started with just the bar and slowly added 5kg while doing 5 reps each until I got to my body weight.

I even randomly won a gift certificate to Three Little Pigs, a soul food restaurant by doing a portion of the CrossFit Games.  I didn't even realize there was a raffle but I was more than happy to eat up the giant Po-Boy sandwhich and side order of Hushpuppies that I couldn't even finish.


CrossFit Update:

My favorite thing about CrossFit and CrossFit Chiang Mai in specific so far is the sense of community that comes along with it.  I'm also having some of the best workouts of my life.  We did a box jump and sprint WOD (workout of the day) on Wednesday and it may have been the toughest workout of my life.  My legs are still sore and completely dead from it.  Plus it was fun seeing how high I could actually jump.  My entire life I've never had to jump more than 12" (30cm) but by following their training, that same day I was able to jump up to 32" (81cm) which was incredible for me.

Afterwards we partnered up and did 50m sprints, walking back and repeating for a crazy total of twelve times.  My slowest time was 8.9 seconds and my best was 7.6 second which I was pretty happy with.  But most of all I was happy that I was able to hit 7.8 seconds for more than half of my runs, keeping the pace.  I've always known sprints are good for me, and sometimes do them on my own.  But honestly, if there isn't a person keeping time, a partner to pace myself against, a set 50m track and the motivation of other people doing it with me, I'll never push myself to 100%.  That is one of the big reasons why I think that CrossFit works so well.  It's that sense of community and motivation, and always having someone to workout with.  Always having a trainer to make sure you are doing the right form and technique, and always someone to push you. Happy Songkran and Thai New Years everyone.

Warm Regards,

Johnny