songkran

This week is the traditional Thai new year, known as songkran. songkran is a pretty big deal. It's basically a week-long water fight, kind of a way to keep cool during the summer. The nursing dorm is closed all week, so I've moved in to Esther and Rob's place. They're still on tour in the states, but there are plenty of other people around.

Even though songkran officially started on Wednesday, the city began preliminary festivities around Monday. When crossing the Ping River, I was showered by some sprinklers that I can only assume the city installed for the week. In the preceding weeks, stores were selling all manner of water guns. You could not go shopping anywhere without encountering a display of super soakers. My favorite model thus far was a Hello Kitty themed weapon, complete with Hello Kitty backpack for the storage of extra water. There are many of these backpack guns, generally featuring cartoon characters like Mickey Mouse or Winnie the Pooh.  

Tuesday was my first legitimate experience of songkran. I was on my way to get some dinner when I spotted one of the nursing students in a group lurking outside of 7'eleven. They saw me approaching and the student called out "teacher!" excitedly. I had no intention of eating my dinner in soggy clothes, so I skillfully maneuvered around them. I felt a bit bad depriving them of their fun, so on my way back from the restaurant I let them get me. They were actually very polite about it. My student poured a bucket of water over me while saying "sorry! sorry!" and kindly avoided getting my hair or purse wet. My other encounters around Esther and Rob's neighborhood have been similarly tame. 

On Wednesday, I had been planning to go and check out the festivities around the old city, but I awoke to rain and cold temperatures. It had been gradually getting hotter and hotter and the last couple of days had been stifling, but somehow we had another freak rainy day. This is very unusual for this time of year I am told. I have really lucked out on the weather. Last year was one of the hottest summers in living memory in Chiang Mai. Anyhow, a water fight in the rain didn't sound like tons of fun, and I knew that I would have plenty more opportunities to witness the festival. All I usually want to do on rainy days is grab a cup of tea and read a good book, so that's exactly what I did. Maybe it was a bit lame, but I enjoyed my day and I'm apologizing to no one. But today the weather was perfect and I managed to make it down to the moat area and witness the craziness that is songkran. I carefully selected a set of clothes that I didn't mind getting wet in nasty moat water and then joined Vicky and Mai in walking down to the base of operations: sarah's boyfriend's apartment.

The closer we got to the moat, the crazier things got. Not only were there people at random spots on the side of the road, waiting to douse passersby, but there were several pickups driving around with huge jars of water in the back, from which people would make sort of mobile attacks on pedestrians. By the time we made it to our destination, we were already soaked. since Kevin lives right across from the moat, our "base" was right in the thick of it. It ended up being just the three of us for the day, although we ran into a few others. For a while we stationed ourselves in the driveway, where one of the other tenets was maintaining a full barrel of water. We all bought plastic buckets and began to throw water at people from said barrel. People were driving by on motorcycles or in the back of pickup trucks at a snails pace. As far as I can figure out, what most people do for songkran is slowly drive around the moat several times while throwing water at each other and drinking beer. Things were actually a lot tamer than I had expected. I'd been told to go in a group because the drinking can get out of hand, while there were plenty of high spirits (and spirits of other kinds) I never felt like it was out of control. That's not to say it's completely safe. I guess there are plenty of drunk driving accidents during this week. 

After holding down the fort for a while, we decided to walk around a bit. We were attacked mercilessly by other people stationed around the moat. I tried not to think about what was in that of water. As long as you don't think about how unhygienic it is, it really is a lot of fun. It's like the mother of all water fights. In fact, Bangkok broke the Guinness World Record for the largest "water pistol fight." 


Unfortunately I didn't want to risk my camera, so I don't have any photos of songkran in Chiang Mai. You'll just have to imagine rows of people lined up on both sides of a moat, all throwing water at each other using buckets or water guns or whatever. some people even had supplies of ice, which made for some freezing cold showers. People were blaring music out of loudspeakers and there were some live bands along the way. Mai and Vicky stopped at one of these and joined the people moshing in front of the stage. since this type of dancing isn't really my thing and by now I was feeling quite tired, I decided to head off on my own. I walked around a bit more, wanting to get a good feel for the festival. I poked my head in a temple along the way, where there were opportunities to make merit. I'm not sure exactly what was going on. Perhaps some day I will be brave enough to actually initiate a conversation with one of the monks. For now I can only guess and occasionally ask a Thai acquaintance about it. 

I cut my way back across the city and returned home, extremely tired and footsore. On Friday I went out again in the late afternoon, but only briefly. I felt I'd experienced the holiday sufficiently. It was pretty fun, but very tiring. Loy Kratong is still my favorite Thai holiday, but it was nice to have an excuse to walk around the city and cool off a bit. My favorite was encountering little kids waiting  outside their family's small business with their parents. There's something about getting attacked by little kids with super soakers that just makes life better. 


As usual, I can't seem to really describe it adequately, but I think you get the idea. Bangkok Post has some good pictures up if you feel curious. http://www.bangkokpost.com/multimedia/photo/231834/water-fun-begins.