IF YOU think Hong Kong during the Lunar New Year feels like an open-air mortuary, you should have been in Bangkok last week for Songkran, the Thai new year. The city emptied from Tuesday night, which I suppose is an unhappy reflection on the city itself. The traffic for 40 kilometres north, east, south and west was described in the local press as 'the mother of all traffic jams'.
Some people took 12 hours to do 60 km. Others spent up to 20 hours in their cars attempting to reach beach resorts or the family village. Even government ministers were entombed for half a day in traffic that moved a metre every five minutes. The result was an utterly deserted city with shutters clamped down; Phnom Penh in 1975 might have felt a little like it.
Out in the provinces and the seaside resorts, hotels that normally gasped for 30 per cent occupancy on a bog standard day were turning people away, which was one reason why I stayed in Bangkok. There was nowhere else to go, or at least nobody else who would have us. I idled away my time in places you would not take your maiden aunt to (they never close) and over lunches in the staggeringly exclusive - and therefore costly - Normandie Grill of the Oriental Hotel.
A brilliantly light restaurant overlooking the Chao Praya River, the impression is one of yellow silk and Louis Seize. The waiters are largely more distinguished than the clientele. That was certainly the case where my party was concerned.
There was one exception to that rule on that deserted Wednesday: I was joined there by the Khunying Malinee Chakrabandhu. A beautiful and unusual minor royal lady in middle age (not that one could tell), she told me in her Marlene Dietrich voice: 'No darling, I am not going out of Bangkok for Songkran. The traffic is too dreadful.' She proved prophetic: the jams outside Bangkok were history making. Trade in urinal bottles at filling stations along the jammed highways was epic.
Back in Bangkok, there was little or no traffic at all. The sun roared down on to parched streets without relief and taxi air-conditioners strained to compete with it and then gave up the unequal struggle. We were, however, not denied one of the more famous features of the Songkran festival: I call it 'water chucking', although I am sure the Thais have a proper name for it.
It features regularly in the pretty picture propaganda that backs up the Thai tourism trade and people who have never set foot in the kingdom are probably well aware that for four days a year, the Thais chuck buckets of water over strangers yet do not expect to get smacked in the face.