THAILAND’S WATER FESTIVAL
‘Ahead lies a four
day, man-made
monsoon, which will
saturate the city’s
streets and all
who sail in them’
F
OR LONG MONTHS SUMMER
has been building to a crescendo
in northern Thailand, slowly
filling the bowl of mountains
that surrounds Chiang Mai with
soupy heat. By the middle of April, a sticky,
wilting haze dulls the glint from the gilded
Buddhas that gaze serenely out from the
city’s 300 temples. The scents of frangipani,
mango and hyper-spiced street food have
been slow-cooked to a ripe miasma; the
contents of the four-mile moat that girdles
the Old City simmered to a green broth.
Something has to give and it can’t wait until
the rains come down in late May. At dusk
on 12 April, the downtown pavements
begin to mass with excitable water warriors,
fingers on plastic triggers, thumbs pressed
over hose tips, buckets abrim. Ahead lies a
four day, man-made monsoon, which will
saturate the city’s streets and all who sail inthem.
By tradition officially stretching from
13 to 16 April, Songkran is the spray-and-
pray festival that marks the Buddhist New
Year on 15 April. It’s a bewildering, but
glorious fusion of dignified religious
faith, familial devotion and deafening,
technicolour aquatic madness. As a
celebration of towering national importance,
Songkran is like a Western Christmas and
New Year rolled into one, with a soggy side
order of trick-or-treat Halloween mayhem.
Every dawn, families file soberly into
temples with offerings and votive
decorations. Every afternoon, rather less
soberly, they rush through the streets toting
triple-chamber water pistols. The first
activity endows good karma and the second
good luck. Though it might not seem so at
the time, a head-to-toe slapstick soaking is
the best start a year could bring.Around 95 per cent of Thais are Buddhist
and Chiang Mai – for 500 years capital of
the old Lanna kingdom, the nation’s rural
heartland – prides itself as a repository of
spiritual and communal tradition. Nowhere
is Songkran celebrated so wholeheartedly:
here, the festivities are strung out for an
extra day and with an enthusiasm that
draws crowds from right across the land.
Initiate conversation on the street – ideally
during the buckets-down ceasefire that
tentatively holds from 8pm to 10am – and
you’ll often find yourself talking to one of
the countless northerners who’ve relocated
to Thailand’s more prosperous south,
returning to their ancestral homeland for a
uniquely profound New Year experience.
It’s an opportunity to renew and reaffirm
traditions, and the family bonds that Thais
hold so dear. Even at Songkran, blood is
much thicker than water.
‘We just don’t have temples like this in
Bangkok,’ says Chiang Mai-born Kompun,
admiring the weathered dragons that guard
the 19th-century Wat Ton Kwen. ‘And the
people up here are more kind and
respectful, they always have time for you.’
With its sombre dark-wood gables and
scattering of silent, orange-robed monks,
the temple is a model of ascetic restraint,
just a few miles outside the city, but a world
away from the power-shower delirium.
Only the colourful and intricately cut paper
flags that sprout from towers of sand
acknowledge the festivities. Kompun and
her son Wasin have already added their
contributions: the flags are themed to their
respective zodiac signs, and an enshrined
Songkran tradition is to bring a bucket or
bag of sand to the temple, replacing the
earth that worshippers have carried out on
their feet over the previous year. Now, she
sprinkles saffron perfumed, jasmine-
petalled water on the golden head of the
temple’s Buddha. ‘It’s a blessing, to wash
away the old year and make a good start for
the new one.’ With a nervousThe temple in the
village of Baan Mae On