Often billed as the world’s largest water fight, the Songkran Festival in Thailand has its roots in centuries-old Buddhist traditions celebrating the new year. But when you allow people to splash water on each other in 95+ degree heat in a popular tourist destination with a low cost of living, you have to expect that tradition will be quickly sidelined by tourists out to have a good time.
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I’ve never seen a VW Bug with monster tires before. The driver was wearing a WW2 style military helmet, which was icing on the cake. |
The term Songkran is derived from a Sanskrit word that means ‘passage’, referring both to the passing of the stars from one astrological constellation to the next but also the passing from one calendar year to the next. To celebrate the new year, Buddhists will sprinkle drops of water on each other to wash away their sins, and they will go to nearby temples to ritually wash statues of Buddha. While Songkran marked the start of the new year in many Asian cultures, it has lost some of that cultural status as the years have passed and as the world has grown smaller. In Thailand, for example, New Year’s day was changed to January 1st in 1940 to align with the rest of the world’s calendars, and Songkran’s status was demoted to a national holiday. This year, the Thai cabinet officially extended the festival nationwide to five days, from April 12th to the 16th, to enable citizens to travel home for the holiday. So despite the fact that it’s not a new year’s celebration, it has still managed to grow in importance with the Thai population. Despite that, depending on where you are, the number of Thai participants may be significantly outweighed by the number of tourists.
In Chiang Mai, a well-regarded destination for backpackers and expats in northern Thailand, you will find plenty of non-Thai residents on any day throughout the year. But when Songkran rolls around, the numbers swell as tourists, myself and my friends included, travel to the town to participate in the Songkran festivities. Much like Mardi Gras in New Orleans can be summed up as “getting drunk on the street” and St Patrick’s Day can be summed up as “getting drunk in an Irish bar while wearing green clothes,” Songkran can be briefly described as an all-out water war.
| That’s a lot of people. And this is just one (admittedly crowded) section of the city. (Photo from the Bankgok Post) |
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You can’t walk more than 50 yards in Chiang Mai without finding someone to sell you a water gun (in fact, I’m surprised that the taxi driver who took us from the airport to the hotel didn’t try to sell us one. He could make a lot of money doing that.) Super Soaker knockoffs will run you between $5USD – $20USD, depending on the tank capacity and power. The guns we got were about $10 each and were more than enough to do battle with. Armed with our guns and sunglasses (to keep the water out of our eyes), we boldly charged (walked) forward into the fray.
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Vendors line the sidewalk along the edge of the moat around the old city. About 1/3 were selling water guns, 1/3 were selling food, 1/3 were selling sodas and drinks. |
There are no major rules to the water fight. If you’re inside a building or restaurant, you’re off-limits. Don’t shoot the cops, but that should be common knowledge (although I did sprinkle some water on a couple of cops while saying “Happy New Year” in Thai, since I didn’t want them to feel left out of the fun). People seemed to avoid shooting the elderly and toddlers, although if they were armed with water guns, they were fair game. That’s about it. Two friends of mine were walking to their hotel with their luggage and got drenched, so being weighed down with luggage and obviously not being armed offered no sanctuary. People were using small squirt guns, big guns with water tanks strapped to their backs, small cups of water, big buckets of water, water from hoses, water from the river, even ice water. Restaurants and bars set up trash barrels outside of their doors, full of water, to allow for easy refills. Hundreds, even thousands of people, lining the sidewalks and walking through the streets of Chiang Mai, shooting anyone and everyone they could see.
| A songthaew. It’s a pickup truck with two long bench seats in the back, covered with walls and a roof, used as a public transportation system in rural areas of Thailand. Most of the time, it’s a great way to get around town for a low price (usually around $1USD). During Songkran, riding a songthaew is a terrible idea. (Photo from The Blond Travels) |
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Within a few minutes of being outside, you were soaked. And I mean soaked like you’d been thrown into a swimming pool soaked. Hopefully you were wearing something that would dry quickly. If not, it didn’t really matter, since it was close to 100 degrees in the sun and the water actually felt good. People were slowly driving by on mopeds, in cars, and songthaews, and participating in the fun. Most of the time willingly, sometimes less so.
Sometimes, a car would drive by with the windows up, and you assumed they were just out to watch the fun. Quickly, a window would roll down an inch or two, the nozzle of a water gun would poke out, squirt you, and the window would roll back up before you knew what happened. At the far less obvious end of the spectrum, people were driving around in pickup trucks with trash cans full of water. A group of people would be standing around the trash can with buckets, dunking them into the water to quickly fill them, then throwing the water at whoever was nearby. Some songthaews had participants in them, but given the design of the vehicle and tinted windows of the trucks, it was hard to tell which were actively engaging us, so we treated them all as hostiles. As one passed us, I saw someone grab the ladder behind the truck, jump onto the rear bumper, and proceed to squirt everyone inside as he rode the bumper for half a block. Once he was satisfied that everyone in the back was properly wet, he hopped off and returned to where we were standing to refill his water gun. On several occasions, as a songthaew drove slowly by, we’d have enough time to get a hand on one of the sliding windows on the side of the truck, slide it open, and hose off the passengers inside before they realized what was going on.
At one point, a friend of mine was in one of the traffic lanes, squirting a car. A bicyclist was coming up in the lane that he was in and saw him just in time to slam on the brakes to avoid hitting him. Her act of mercy stopped her right in front of a group of 10-15 people, all armed with water guns and buckets, and she proceeded to get drenched. She was laughing too hard to pedal away. During lulls in traffic (or when you were bored at shooting at cars), the fights turned on each other, with one side of the street shooting across to the other, and people getting soaked by friendly fire.
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Cristina squirting a truck full of people. Just after I took this photo, two of the people in the back of the truck nailed her with buckets of water. Unfortunately, I didn’t get a good picture of that. |
After an hour or two of water gun combat, you’re probably ready for food and a beverage, so you find a nearby restaurant and grab a seat. If you get a seat in the sun, you may have a chance to dry off, but you’re also probably going to get hit with random spray from the street. That’s not really a problem, except when someone’s shooting river water and it gets into your beer. There are some things that alcohol will kill, and I don’t think that Thai river parasites fall into that category. Once you were dry and properly rehydrated, you were probably ready to start again. So out you went, getting drenched within minutes, laughing the whole time.
I probably shot a water gun more in the 36 hours that I was in Chiang Mai than I have in the past 36 years of my life. It’s a lot of fun to have the freedom to shoot anyone and everyone you see, knowing it’s going to come back to you. It would be a great thing to try to start back home, but I’m sure someone would get shot in the eye and go to the hospital, or some moron would put vodka in their water gun and ruin it for the rest of us. (This is why we can’t have nice things) But in Chiang Mai, it’s all good fun, with locals and tourists shooting everyone side by side. It’s a beautiful celebration of the new year, but more importantly, it’s a great way to stand outside in the heat without getting heatstroke. You can keep your portable pocket fan to keep you cool. I’ll take a thousand people with super soakers.
| Water, water, everywhere, and not a drop to drink. (Photo from What’s Up Chiang Mai) |
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