Happy New Year – Thai Style!

This week was the Songkran Festival also known as the Water Festival and it marks the Thai lunar New Year. The Songkran Festival starts on April 13th and this year the holiday was declared for 5 days. It is essentially a nation-wide water fight! Before I write about our Songkran adventure, I need to address the days preceding.

As everyone in the states is aware Sunday, April 8, 2007 was Easter. Sometimes in Thailand Western holidays will be celebrated just for the fun of it but Easter apparently is not one of those. I would guess this is because of its close proximity to Songkran which is a very big holiday for the Thai. There were no Easter Bunnies or Easter Eggs available in the markets but there were quite a lot of water guns of varying capacity. Karl and I were able to attend church for Easter which was a nice way for us to celebrate the holiday. We got to meet the local members of the church as well as some missionaries from America.

On Monday, Karl was a man with a mission. We rented a motorcycle and headed to the local University to see if we could arrange for a model in traditional Thai costume. We met with a professor at the University’s School of Dance and learned that we had to get permission from the Ayuthaya Historical Society. While I happily waited for Karl at the school, he rode around with one of the students selecting the temple sites where he wanted to take pictures and then going to the Historical Society. It turned out that with the wages for the models and the payment to the Historical Society for permission, the whole thing would cost over $100 for taking pictures for one hours. In the end, Karl and I decided it was too expensive.



Monday evening we were headed to see some of the ruins at night. The city keeps some of the largest ruins dramatically lit for about two hours after dark. On the way, we encountered a slight mishap on the motorcycle. We suffered a few scrapes and bruises and we are immensely grateful that was the worst of it. This all happened in front of a pet store and veterinarian’s office and the staff came out to help us. It turned out to be a convenient place to have such an accident because they had disinfectant for our scrapes and they graciously cleaned us up before helping us back to our hotel.

Maybe it’s a sign that we are ready to go home because we welcomed the excuse to take it easy. We’ve spent a few days reading books and watching TV while we munched on our favorite foods both from the Thai market nearby as well as the 7-Eleven. We even made a visit to Kentucky Fried Chicken for lunch one day. The chicken was as you would expect but the side dishes that came with the meal were distinctly not western. They had a tuna fish salad with corn, pineapple and beans that was pretty good! The nearby market has a variety of stores besides the food stands and we also spend some time window shopping. Our idleness has been encouraged by the fact that there have been several thunderstorms this past week and it is easy to justify staying in when the rain is so heavy it is like taking a shower.

Friday morning, we started the day with our usual routine for Ayuthaya. We woke up very late, took our time getting ready and finally headed out for “breakfast” when it was almost lunch time. We knew that on this day, the likelihood of us getting wet was at 100% so we tried to prepare as best we could. I put our small digital camera in a Ziplock bag and after finishing our chocolate milk and cinnamon roll breakfast from 7-Eleven we used the shopping bag to wrap up the little handbag we carried. Besides getting people wet, another part of Songkran tradition is smearing white powder mixed with water on everyone’s face. We had already gotten splashed a little bit and received some white face paint on our way to the market. While we ate our breakfast we saw the drenching that people received as they went past groups of Songkran revelers. The drenching often went both ways because people in the back of pickup trucks had barrels of water they drew from to splash the people they passed. Karl decided that we needed some defense. We stopped and bought a couple of small water pistols and when I pointed out that they were hardly a defense, he admitted that he just wanted to be able to squirt people back.

As soon as we stepped onto the street it quickly became apparent that we were indeed greatly out gunned. The water guns carried by the kids were high power and high capacity. The other people who chose to go low tech and just had bowls of water were just as effective. We were soon soaked and our faces covered in white face paint. The younger kids seems quite intent on keeping us wet and one little boy came around every few minutes to squirt us with his water gun. We would return fire as he scurried away to reload. As vehicles carrying water soaked partiers drove by, we joined our adopted group in throwing more water at them.



At one point I decided to check the camera only to discover that my Ziplock bag had failed this test and there was water inside. I made my way back to the safety of the covered sidewalk and checked out the camera. It wasn’t too wet and after cleaning it up with a few tissues I was able to take some pictures of Karl and he continued playing in the water. Karl had made friends with a young boy who lent Karl a bowl. Armed with a more suitable weapon, Karl and his new friend joined forces and had great fun splashing passing vehicles. With a couple of small plastic shopping bags, I was able to wrap up the camera and return to the fun. These bags did a better job than the Ziplock and my camera stayed dry until it was time for the Songkran parade. In the picture below, you can see Karl standing by the truck ready to splash the occupants while his buddy is back at the ice chest full of water getting a refill.



The parade started with a procession of Buddha images and statues of revered local monks. People lined up to splash the Buddha images and statues with a little bit of water. More trucks followed with flesh and blood monks and they had bowls of blessed water that they liberally splashed over the crowds with bamboo brushes. The spectators poured water over the monk’s hands as a display of respect. Many people had bottles of perfumed water that they had reserved for the Buddha images and monks.



The next participants in the parade are naturally well equipped for Songkran celebrations. As the elephants sauntered down the street they reached their trunks into barrels of water and blew it out over the crowds. Everyone had fun with this. I was in the middle of the street standing on the raised median taking pictures with a plastic bag positioned above my camera so I could quickly shove it in the bag when water was headed my way. Some of the pictures I took of the elephants didn’t turn out very well because I was so cautious about keeping the camera dry that I didn’t keep it still long enough for it to focus. I did get this picture of a smaller elephant that was elaborately painted for the holiday. You can also see the elephant handler reaching into a barrel of water on a cart that accompanied the elephants to ensure that they always had enough liquid ammunition.

The elephants that followed were more subdued as they were carrying people dressed in traditional Ayuthaya fashion. These elephants also were beautifully painted as well as being draped with striking silk blankets. The costumes the women wear are much more interesting then the men’s with gold pieces in their hair and around their necks. The pieces of vibrantly colored silk clothing on their own may seem a bit garish to western tastes but put together in the Thai style they are quite elegant.



The parade was quite long and there were a lot of things to see. The participants in the parade were from various local companies, schools and other organizations. Preceding each parade entry, individuals carried a sign or two identifying the organization. We saw groups of similarly dress people dancing along to the music of their associated band. Sometimes there were a variety of musical instruments being played and other times, there were just drums. The people along the parade route were encouraged by the dancers to join them and some did for a little way. The observers also interacted with the people in the parade by splashing them with water and rubbing white paint on their faces.



Many of the parade participants were dressed in a variety of traditional clothing. There were styles from many different historical periods and they ranged from formal to more everyday. Karl was happy that we had been able to get pictures of people in traditional costume and didn’t have to pay anything for it. His only wish would have been that we could have had one of the temple ruins as a backdrop instead of a city street. The participants who were all dressed up sometimes carried the organization’s sign or various offerings. Some, like the girls in the picture below, were doing the traditional Thai dancing.



Another type of costume that we saw often was the costumes that are worn for the traditional Thai drama the Ramakian. There are two types of Ramakian: the Khohn is an all male cast and was once only performed for royalty and the Lakhon is an all female cast that was once performed for lower nobility. Here is a picture of some Khohn performers in the parade.



No parade would be complete with out floats and there were several in this parade that were just fantastic. I was impressed with the giant peacock made from palm fronds and other plants. A peacock on the float was a common theme so I’m sure there is some significance but Karl and I don’t know what that is. We also saw a few pigs and I’m pretty sure that is because the recent Chinese New Year started the year of the pig. We went a bit shutter happy during the parade and took a lot of pictures. If you want to see more of the beautiful Thai costumes, I’ve put them on our online photo album at: Songkran Parade



After the parade finished, Karl and I were ready to go back to our room and get cleaned up. We were soaked through and practically covered in white face paint. It was worth it because we really had a great time. One of the ladies who works at our hotel snapped this picture for us as we came in. They had to mop up the floor after us because we left soggy footprints!



On Saturday we knew that the probability of getting wet was still rather high. We took similar precautions with our belonging but since we didn’t want to join the water fight we also brought an umbrella. We felt that carrying an open umbrella would be universally understood as “I don’t want to get wet”. It worked for most of the day. We were able to go visit our friends at the pet store. We had a small gift for them to say thank you for all their help. The two ladies who had helped us were Benjawan and Namtip and they are sisters. The pet store is their family business. Benjawan had been an exchange student through AFS in Massachusetts and Namtip is very much interested in learning to scuba dive.

Saturday evening Karl and I went to Wat Ratchaburana to have a look around before they closed for the evening. It looked to us as though the main tower had some modern day materials added to help in the reconstruction but even though everything wasn’t original it was an impressive sight. The other towers and stupas on the site looked like they were all original materials and one tower looked a bit like it was leaning. These temples were built with brick so they don’t last as long as the stone temples we saw in Cambodia and Nang Rong. It didn’t help that Ayuthaya was vehemently ransacked by the Burmese in 1767. The Burmese seemed to want to erase everything about the Thai culture, destroyed anything that was sacred to the Thai and even carted off the gold that covered the religious images. In this last picture, Karl is standing in front of what remains of some carvings at the site.



Scattered around the temple grounds are pieces of what used to be Buddha images. There are a lot of pieces so I imagine that at one time this temple had Buddha statues all around its outer wall. The placement of the remnants seems to confirm this as they are all lined up on top of a low perimeter wall. Where possible, pieces were stacked together to make the statue as complete as possible.

As we were leaving, we got pictures of the sunset and tried to get some night time pictures. Since we hadn’t brought the tripod with us, the night pictures were really blurry. The lighting of the temples makes them all the more striking so we’ll have to come back with a tripod next time.

However, on Sunday we enjoyed another day of rest, content to sleep in late, watch TV and enjoy some food at a little restaurant we found hidden in the middle of the market.