Songkran: The New Year Thai Style

We have been drenched for four days now. It is Songkran, the Water Festival, the lunar New Year in Thailand. We are in Northern Thailand in Chiang Mai, where the Water Festival originated – and it is celebrated with abandon here. A walled city, with moats on all sides, one cannot walk ten feet in the Central city without being “blessed” with water. Young children and their parents line the streets with buckets and water guns, pouring water over the shoulders of passers-by wishing them well in the New Year. We have taken to returning the gesture – reaching into young children’s buckets and sprinkling water on their shoulders, as we say, Sawasdee bee mai kah! (Happy New Year!) The children giggle, their elders smile, and bless us, clearly happy that we understand that the water is meant to be more than just an opportunity to get cool in the hot season.

Teenagers and young adults get a little more exuberant (fueled by much drinking and merry-making), turning hoses on people, and splashing one another from the backs of pick-up trucks armed with trash cans filled with water. Go-go girls dance on stage platforms, showering the crowds below while rock and roll blares on the streets. Young farang (Westerners) have embraced this rowdier side of Sangkran – with an energy akin to Spring Break in Fort Lauderdale. They crowd the streets lined with bars in short shorts and tight tee-shirts, pouring ice water down the backs of one another and anyone else who gets close enough to be an easy target.

Religiously, Songkran is a time of cleansing – of washing away bad karma, of starting over, of making merit for luck in the New Year. Chiang Mai is home to over 300 temples. Side by side with the city-wide water fight are more traditional water rituals – the procession of the Buddhas outside of the temples, so that the people can shower them (and their elders) with water. The bringing of offerings from the local provinces and towns to the governor of Chiang Mai, with hill tribes dressed in their finest clothes, bringing their best harvest fruits as gifts. There is plenty of water here, as well – splashed with more reverence and blessings, but just as wet.

Unlike the famous temples we have visited in Bangkok, which border on tourist attractions, the temples of Chiang Mai are packed with people during Songkran – bringing offerings to the monks, saying prayers for their ancestors, snapping photos, making merit. Children from local traditional Thai dance schools perform for their families and friends, and are awarded with presents for their efforts. The temples feel close to the people here – not separate and distantly sacred, but a central part of daily life. There is a familiarity, a connectedness that we have not yet experienced. We are welcomed in almost every temple we visit, invited to be blessed, offered fruits and sweets to give to the monks. And of course, we are, once outside the temple walls, met yet again, by another well-wisher, joyously dousing us with water to honor the New Year.