Songkran - Time for Thai New Year
The golden shower trees currently explodes in yellow and the mango season  is soon to reach its peak. Now its the time to indulge in the most deliocious of all thai desserts, mango with sticky rice and coconot milk . The Nam Dokmai mangoes are soft as luke warm butter this time of the year and just melts in the mouth.
Its also the third new year of this year, Songkran. We have already celebrated western and chinese new years. As we have already mentioned in previous posts Thai people love fun and festivals so why have only one new year when you can have three?

The Songkran festival,  the highlight of all festivals has probably a Hindu origin from India.
The name comes from Sanskrit and describes the sun's motion in the zodiac. When the sun leaves  Aries and enters the Ox. That is the period known as Maha Songkran.
Officially, however, a date for the new year is set at 13th of April.

A huge water throwing party
Most people celebrate this holidays by playing water that is splashing water. The kids loves it and the adults becomes kids again.
It is de facto warm in April, the cold water cools (nowadays its even cooler since the buckets are full of ice cubes). The idea is to be generous with water when there is not a lot of it. Then you might get favorable monsoon rains for the rain season.
The water is also used for ritual purity, during Songkran people ritually bathe and wash their Buddha statues.
Still younger people visit their elders to show respect and to pour blessed water over their hands.
During Songkran parades and beauty contests(again) are held and at some places and rockets are fired to get rid of evil spirits from the previous year.
The first day of the new year, Sok Wan Thaloeng is considered to be in the middle of the hottest
period and when day and night hours were evenly distributed.
Actually, every day of Songkran has its function, during Songkrans second day a chedi  is built of sand. This symbolizes chedi that holds Buddha's ashes.

But again nowadays, Songkran is mostly about war- a huge war of water splashing. If you enjoy this kind of fun, join the crowds at the old city gates. The war is on!

We are now taking a short break for holidays but hang in there more material coming soon.

Jan & Per