Please welcome guest blogger Ingrida from Kawapanga.com
Songkran is a Thai word which means “move” or “change place”. It is also a name of a traditional Thai lunar New Year. Celebration starts at the same time ea ch year then Sun changes its position in a zodiac around 13th of April. This is the time then all Thais leave to their home towns to visit their family.
The Songkran festival is a 3 day long celebration. It started once as a custom to wash saint Buddha statues. People used to cleanse Buddha images in household shrines and monasteries by gently pouring water mixed with Thai fragrance over them. It was also customary to spend Songkran with elderly, friends, and neighbors. Pay respect to them while visiting. Thais used this time to thoroughly clean their home. While doing so people used to get wet, and it must have felt good, because it grew into nationwide water splashing.
Songkran week usually is one of the hottest during summer time; a lot of water is being tossed about. Thais soak their neighbors, cars that pass by, animals. Everything gets drenched wet. Modern Thais now buy water guns and go to special designated areas in Bangkok and Chiang Mai that become water battlefields. Generally all Thailand in Songkran is one big water and talc playground.
Also known as “Water Festival” it now attracts tourists, who come to participate in water craze. Tourists go out into streets and splash water and paint skin with white talc. Songkran gives everyone a chance to release their frustrations with heat and literally cool off during the peak of the hot season. People roam the streets with buckets of water or water guns (sometimes mixed with mentholated talc), or post themselves at the side of roads with a garden hose and drench each other and passersby. Nobody escapes Songkran!
Songkran is a time for cleaning and renewal. During which Thai people not only wet each other till the last thread, but also go to a wat (Buddhist monastery) to pray and give foods to monks.
Thai people believe that Songkran water will wash away bad luck and bring good luck and prosperity for the New Year.
Suk-san wan Songkran! ("Happy Songkran Day")
Ingrida LaMadrid
