Songkran

Everything was wet; every stretch of road, vehicle and house in the city was glimmering with the watery reflection of the sun, every person was soaked through and water crashed on top of you from above. You would have thought it was raining.

You were wrong.

Songkran is the celebration of the Thai New Year - celebrated by washing all the Buddha images and temples with scented water and blessing your elders. In other words: an excuse to close down all the shops, cancel summer classes and have a country wide water fight for 3 days to celebrate.

In Nakhon Phanom, the celebrations started early as little children anticipated the excitement. As I biked to Suzanne's house to meet for a haircut I was ambushed several times. Children sprayed me with water guns, ran in front of me to stop me from biking further and dumped buckets of cold water on my head. Teenage boys stood in front of my bike as they rubbed baby powder all over my face and continued to dump cold water down the back of my shirt. By the time I reached Suzanne's house I was dripping, cold and the baby powder had turned into white paste on my forehead.
The first day of Songkran was the official elders' day - my family drove to Ban Paeng to visit our grandparents and wish them well. We stood outside of our grandparents' house and threw buckets of water on passing motorbikes and trucks filled with dancing villagers in the back. When we got tired of standing at the side of the road we took our buckets with us as we walked toward the markets, stopping at the people at the side of the road to douse them in water and exchange baby powder. The market street was filled with people dancing to traditional Thai music, water was tossed into the air, sprinkling over the heads of all the villagers and a looming cloud of baby powder hung in the air. That afternoon our parents and grandparents held their hands over a silver bowl and we all took turns blessing them by pouring scented water over their hands and wishing them beauty, long life and wealth. The next two days were cause for more celebration, more water throwing and more baby powder.

High pitched squeals and shrieks filled the air as I sat in the back of my second host family's truck and threw ice water at the people in the street below. We tossed it in the faces and on the heads of people walking and got into full out WARS with other trucks that dared to have water as cold as ours. The final day all my Thai friends and I crammed into the back of our friends' truck and took the streets from lunchtime until well after dark. We reached the river edge where there were stages set up for bands to play and we stood up in the back of the truck during the traffic jams and jumped up and down singing and dancing to our favourite songs by BigAss, Bodyslam, Silly Fools and other Thai bands. Most of the villagers who had come into the city danced at the river edge, drunk and much more outgoing than Thai people EVER are. They ran up to the trucks, plastering coloured baby powder on the pretty girls' faces and danced around carrying pitchers of beer in their hands. Red water, yellow water and ice water was tossed into the air, staining our shirts and some of the more rambunctious girls danced on top of barrels in bikinis.
By the time it was dark most of the city had gone home, the ice cold water leaving them shaking and in need of a warm shower despite the 40 degree weather. But we still kept driving - filling up our barrels with water from the gas station, filling the water with bags of ice and shrieking when we were sprayed with particularly cold water. We started to recognise the people who had ice water as we passed them for a eight or ninth time through the busiest areas of the town.

Songkran was an excuse to break physical barriers, laugh more than I thought physically possible and have the most fun I've ever had. My friends and I went into hysterics when we stopped suddenly and I fell over and got stuck in the bucket of water; when a few of the boys jumped out of the truck and chased a group of girls down the street with their water guns out; when our driver didn't realise they had gotten out and started moving without them; and as we watched them running down the street after us as we drove away.

If I only have one chance to return to Thailand it will be during Songkran; it is the true essence of Thai culture that I love, all wrapped up in the biggest party of history.

"So get out of your seats and jump around, jump around" - House of Pain