We were very lucky to experience the Buddhist/Hindu celebration of Songkran, known as the Water Festival in honour of the Thai New Year, while staying in Hua Hin. This festival, celebrated widely throughout Southeast Asia is based on a Zodiac calendar, it has strong religious, cultural and family components. In recent years it has been popularized into a huge water fight and communal party. The origins of this important festival honour preparation and good tithing for the new year, honouring family members particularly parents and elders in the community and giving alms to the Buddhist monks. The celebrations last 3 days, typically from April 13th-15th and many Thais use this as a time to return home and visit their families, to clean their homes, the temples, and other shared communal spaces.
After learning about the festival, we were prepared to get wet when we ventured out into the streets on the main festival day. Within 30 seconds of getting out of our grab a lovely Thai woman smiled at us, gave us a Thai blessing and poured a bowel of water over each of us. The kids were anxious to get water guns as we wandered into the main street there was a huge stage with live music, a large bubble area, and a huge rain channel. Everywhere we turned people had huge water guns, buckets of water or buckets of a chalk like paste. As you moved through the crowd of people, people spray you with water and a huge smile or gently rub coloured paste on your cheeks as they repeated well wishes’ for the New Year. At times people would dump ice cold water from buckets on you as you walked by; although this was a shock to the body with the temperature at plus 35 C and beautifully sunny, the cold water was often more pleasant than it sounds. The entire family had a great time engaging in water fights with strangers, when Alastair and I got tired and sat down for a cold beer, the kids enjoyed and intense water fight with some Thai kids. We stopped for dinner away from the main area on our way home (hoping to give ourselves a chance to dry off). We met a nice couple from Castlegar, BC, and enjoyed chatting with them for a bit. Although we thought we were nice and dry as we climbed into the car we had booked as a return trip we got surprised with more buckets of really cold water! Luckily the lovely woman who had given us a few rides already was well prepared for Songkran and had lined her backseat with blankets.
