Songkran: Super Soakers and World War III

*unfortunately the picture wouldn't post, so you'll just have to wait!

If I had just one phrase to dedicate to describing the sheer madness of Thai New Year, it would be this: Balls-to-the-Wall Water War. What needs to be emphasized about Songkran in Chiang Mai is sheer magnitude. It’s the fact that during this three day period, the entire city stops and engages in combat. It’s the fact that every man, woman, and child is armed with some kind of water displacing device. It’s the fact that you can’t take five paces outside of your guesthouse without getting drenched. There’s no exaggeration there. Whatever spiritual beginnings the festival might have once had, it has digressed into all-out mayhem.

At least in name, Songkran is an important religious festival for the Thai people. It reigns in the Thai New Year and marks a time to wash away the trials and tribulations of the past and prepare for what’s to come. Therein lays the origin of the water fights that have now enveloped the nation. They were once friendly gestures of cleansing (and certainly on a much more prudent scale). Neighbors would carry buckets of water with flower pedals and monks would carry their alms bowls, gently splashing the tiniest bits of water on passersby.

Today, the rituals of Songkran have been all but obscured in a non-stop, three day orgy of water. Chiang Mai’s layout really lends itself well to the modern incarcerations of the ancient festival. What would be the biggest hindrance in most places for city-wide water warfare? A reservoir of H20 large enough to quench the demands of an entire water gun-totting urban population. Chiang Mai’s 5m deep moat surrounds the crumbling gates of the Old City and provides just the aquatic storehouse that the festival merits.

Songkran is unique in that over its three day period, there is really no exact moment where everyone can burst out and say “Happy New Year!” America’s New Year is all about the big countdown. During Chinese New Year, fireworks go on for days in either direction, but firecrackers crescendo at midnight on New Year’s Eve. Thailand’s New Year is different. It's about drawing out the passion of that one moment evenly over the course of three days as if to say, ‘Why exhaust yourselves for 10 seconds when you can have a weekend-long orgasm.’