Songkran Festival

Songkran is primarily a Festival of Water. It is held just prior to Aquarius being in the heavens. It is also the traditional Thai New Year. Sadly it more or less heralds the start of the rainy season, for the next six months the temperature will be nudging 40c everyday and you can guarantee rain, usually in the evening. The temperatures now are getting stupid!!!!

Nuch’s Songkran started at 5am! She got up very early and made a load of food for the Monks at the local Temple. Lam Lukka Temple is around 15km away, you can’t miss it, it’s the one with the huge Buddha at the front. The trip involves giving the food up to a communal point then praying and being blessed by the Monks. All quite uplifting and a feel good factor.

Songkran basically involves getting very wet; don’t be surprised as you go about your day that someone will just throw a bucket of water over you. If you don’t want to get wet, you should stay inside for the three days of festivities. Gangs in picks go around throwing pail’s full of water at passer bys, and on most corners there are Gangs that pelt you with water. Many Thai’s choose to go back to family over this weekend. It’s all very similar to Christmas in the west.

To get to Nuch’s parents you have a 200m walk down a 2m wide alley, there are houses on either side. Along this walkway there were three Songkran parties. I had to walk the walk four times. The first was ok! They weren’t sure if the Farang was up to a dousing. The second and third time I got a thorough soaking and on the last was the best of all. I had my laptop with me so not wanting a hefty bill left Nuch and I alone, just as we had past a young girl threw a whole bucket of water at us. I dodged behind Nuch and avoided any of the water! Nuch however got the full load, she was soaking!!!! I’m still laughing to myself.

Unfortunately there is a dark side to Songkran. People get absolutely shit faced! 11am in the morning and the Thai’s were on the whisky, all sounds good, but then they get on motorbikes, on the back of pick ups and even driving. It is carnage on the road. In my last blog, I said the government is trying to keep the death toll below a thousand; it will be more like 1500. Mostly through drink related deaths on the road. I saw several kids on mopeds, they were slaughtered on drink. God knows if they made it home.

Apart from this, Songkran is a really cool festival. Nuch’s Grandma as given us our own Buddha likeness for our new house, when we got home we put a garland of flowers around it and covered it in scented water. Life is good.