Grab Your Umbrellas, It’s Songkran
If you’re like me, you once made an offering at a temple shaped like a dragon in hopes that it would protect you from the city-wide battle that you had stumbled into while waiting for the train to take you across the national border where if luck held, you would be able to find a dry set of clothes for the first time in over 48 hours. Let me wind that back. (Yes, for those curious readers, this is another Thailand story.)
I arrived in Northern Thailand with four fellow travelers, including one professor who was ostensibly chaperoning the entire thing. We knew that the north would be quieter than Bangkok, where we had come from, but it was creepy quiet. It was like in a Western when doors are boarded up, children are pulled from the street, there may have even been a tumbleweed following us around.
When we asked at the hotel we were staying at, the owner/bellhop/cat wrangler told us with a gesture to the temple across the street, that it was Songkran, the new year and water festival. Little did we know how ominous of a statement that was.
We decided to participate in tradition and start our day by making an offering at the temple. It was a beautifully ornate Buddhist temple that was made to look like a dragon eating you whole as you entered. We made our offerings of some basic toiletries and snacks and were given a bracelet to show that we had earned good merit and washed away our bad luck for the coming year. We also got to take some water and wash the temple’s Buddha statue as part of the symbolism. That’s not why it’s called the water festival though.
The stillness that had greeted us on the way in was gone. Instead, the main streets were bursting with people running and hollering in every direction. We went to ask the owner of the hotel what the commotion was about, but all he said was “Songkran” before shooting us all with a super soaker he had behind the counter.
We went back to the room and discovered two things. 1.) This was Songkran. A nationwide water fight that could last for days. 2.) They didn’t care that we were foreigners, we had to defend ourselves.
My friend Bruce and I decided to walk to the nearest convenience store and see if we could rustle up weaponry for the rest of the group. We made it about 10 feet before we were both drenched. Every man, woman, and child had some water-dispensing device, and nobody was safe.
A motorcycle pulled up next to us and I felt relief. The driver had his hands full with driving so maybe there was some safety. My eyes then fell upon his great great great grandmother, (I’m estimating,) sitting on the back of the motorcycle. She gave us both a smile with her sole remaining tooth, almost as if to apologize, before pulling a bucket from who-knows-where and splitting its contents judiciously between us. It was only later that we found out they sometimes put dyes and shredded paper in the water.
So, what’s the point? Frist, Songkran starts April 13th and can last for five days, so we’re right in the middle of it. Second, I like sharing my Thailand stories. Most importantly though, I like the approach. An annual tradition of washing away the past year for a fresh beginning in the new one, and you do it with help from the community around you. That seems like a philosophy worth noting.
