appConfigEntityId

bodyType

customContents

entityId

entityUuid

isVideo

articlePageQuery

article

articleSchemaContent

content

hooksArticlePageAdvertisementConfigArticle

hooksArticlePageFloatingButtonConfigArticle

appConfig

filter

json

liveArticle

Ron Emmons

Like every Thai city during mid-April, Chiang Mai hosts two types of the water-splashing festival - the traditional and the modern.
Songkran,  the 'water-throwing festival', is Thailand's  most important  celebration and takes place from  April 13 to 15 each year. It marks the traditional Thai New Year and is at a time  when temperatures hover around 40 degrees  Celsius.  The practice of splashing water  helps to beat the heat but, as first-time participants quickly find out,   there is splashing and then there is splashing.
The   traditional way of celebrating New Year embodies everything that is endearing about Thai culture - respect and consideration for others, a flair for decoration and sanuk (a love of fun). The more modern method is a full-on, free-for-all water war, fought with buckets and toy weapons.  Foreign visitors are much more likely to witness the latter.
Songkran is thought to have originated among the ethnic Tai people who   migrated south from China into  Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam, and   was originally  a  fertility rite to ensure adequate rain  for a good harvest.
Each of the three days of the festival is associated with a different activity. The first,  Wan Songkran Long, is the last day of the old year and  begins with the letting off of firecrackers to chase away evil spirits. Houses are cleaned and scrubbed and Buddha images are symbolically bathed.  In Chiang Mai,  Buddha statues from  the major temples are lined up for the Songkran Parade, which takes place in the afternoon and goes along  Tha Pae and  Ratchadamnoen roads to Wat Phra Singh. The parade is headed by the  Phra Sihing, the city's most highly revered image, and the road is lined with people ready to bathe the statues with lustral water.
Wan Nao, the second day,  is traditionally spent preparing food to offer to monks the next day, as well as   taking sand to the temples to replace the grains that   were carried out on the soles of shoes  after visits   during the  previous year. The sand is piled into makeshift stupas (moulded structures) and decorated with colourful pennants, some depicting the animals of the Chinese zodiac. Another ritual  is the placing of support sticks around the Bo tree. These forked branches   are stripped of  bark and brightly painted then  adorned with a spray of flowers before being propped against the  trees.
On  Wan Phaya Wan, the third day, the  morning is   spent offering  food and new robes to the monks in return for their spiritual guidance.  Some Thais also buy and symbolically release birds, turtles and fish.  Later in the day,   people visit older relatives,      who bless the youngsters by sprinkling water  over their left shoulders, a practice known as rot nam dam hua.
While visitors  may be keen to witness some of these genteel traditional  celebrations, they will  certainly encounter the  other face of Songkran.   As soon as  you step outside,    you are likely to be given a soaking,  so  consider what to wear and  carry with you.  Light, quick-drying clothes are ideal, along with a minimum of accessories - leave your passport, wallet and mobile phone locked in your room and  take a little money  for emergencies. The Chiang Mai police cover their (real) pistols with plastic bags.
Many of Chiang Mai's most interesting sights are located inside the old city, an area of about  4 sq km surrounded by a moat. Little remains of the old city wall, apart from   five gates and four bastions.  On the grounds of  Wat Phra Singh, the scripture repository,  just to the right inside the entrance, is considered to be the pinnacle of Northern Thai architecture, with its beautiful glass mosaic and lacquer decorations, set into  an elegant wooden structure on a stucco base surrounded by angels. At nearby  Wat Chedi Luang stands  Chiang Mai's biggest stupa, as well as the City Pillar, believed to house the  guardian spirits.
The Three Kings Monument depicts  King Mengrai,  the founder of Chiang Mai, discussing the layout of the city with  King Ramkhamhaeng of Sukhothai and  King Ngam Muang of Phayao. Behind the  structure, the Arts and  Cultural Centre is housed in an attractive, colonial-style building and offers a wealth of  information on the city's past, which stretches back more than 700 years. In fact, according to the Chiang Mai Chronicle, the city was founded at 4am on  April 14, 1296, so Songkran is also a chance to celebrate its birthday.
In the old days, people  used a palm-sized, embossed silver bowl  to impart their New Year wishes in the form of scented water sprinkled over the shoulder. However, times have changed and now plastic buckets, a hose and 'turbo-charged'  pistols are all part of the armoury of  the water thrower. These weapons  are so effective that in recent years some of them,  including high-pressure water guns made from PVC piping, have been banned.
Most  visitors take the attitude  of 'if you can't beat them, join them' and enter the fray - buying a  water pistol and spraying everyone in sight.  But obtaining ammunition can be a problem.
In Chiang Mai, there are three solutions. The easiest is to base yourself in front of your  guest house and  use a hose  to fill up a plastic barrel on the street, thereby securing  a constant supply of water with which to terrorise passers-by. The second  option is to head for the city moat with a bucket  and a long piece of  rope,  to enable re-loading from the seemingly limitless water supply (though the moat has been known to run dry in over-exuberant years). Bear in mind that this is the epicentre of Songkran activity and the moat water is not hygienic.
The third  choice is to get a group of friends together, load a pick-up truck with a couple of barrels of water, throw in a few blocks of ice for good measure and drive around the city shooting freezing jets of water at everyone in sight.  The driver  should  lock the doors and windows to avoid the deluge, but just witnessing the mayhem  is exciting enough.
Like moths to a flame, pick-up trucks in Chiang Mai are invariably attracted to the roads around the moat, where they form a traffic jam,  run out of water then become sitting ducks for the thousands of bucket-wielders lining the moat.
While the chaos seems to have little in common with the more demure aspects of the festival found in local temples, there is still a  traditional element of the event at play  - the fertility rite,  for people in this case, not crops. Songkran celebrations provide a unique opportunity to meet people   and many Thai couples confess to having met during  New Year festivities. So, if you happen to spot someone you fancy while the water is flying everywhere,  attract their attention  by dousing them with a bucket of freezing cold water,  smile and shout, 'Sawasdee phi mai!' (Happy New Year!).
Getting there: Thai Airways (www.thaiair.com) operates several flights daily from Hong Kong to Bangkok, and onwards to Chiang Mai. Travellers using this option need not pass through immigration until they reach Chiang Mai.



Wet, wet, wet