One of the oft-overlooked benefits of living on the other side of the world, in a culture different from your own, is the ability to time travel. Here I am not talking about the whimsical 12 hour difference from home, that allows me to speak with my mom when she is going to bed and I am just waking uptruthfully not an entirely novel conceptnor the experience of being in a bamboo hut without electricity or running water, hours from a paved road. What is truly remarkable, is while on the other end of the line, mom is existing in 2007, thanks to a wrinkle in the space-time continuum, I am currently enjoying the benefits of 2550. I wouldnt believe it either, if werent for the university students proudly donning their custom windbreakers boasting SCIENCE 47 or FRESHY 49. It is in this warped sense of time that one celebrates the New Year not on the first of January (which marked the move from 2549 to 2550) but in April.
Celebrating the New Year is a funny thing, and as my childhood wore on the my experience changed: first I only knew it as adults laughter muffled through my bedroom door, then as huddling with my brother watching old movies in our parents bedroom, and then it became the battle against sleep and the slowly ticking clock. Later, New Years Eve, as with so many events in adolescence and adulthood, became intrinsically tied with drinking and raucousness.
My own experiential evolution is a microcosm for that of the Thai New Year also called Songkran. Songkran started centuries ago as a Buddhist holiday where people bathe statues of the Buddha with fragrant-petal-laced water, and monks bless people by dipping a bundle of straw in water, and with a flick of the wrist, spread it above bowed heads. It has since digressed into a country-wide week-long water fight where one is never safe from being doused head to toe by a bunch of drunken hooligans in the back of a pick-up truck. Luckily the Thai New Year falls during the hottest month in Thailand (and what feels like the entire world), andwhen the water doesnt come from a trash can full of huge bricks of icegetting soaked can actually be a welcomed respite from the heat.
Some ties to the holidays origin remain, and throughout Songkraan I was reminded of my time at Sundance, where trying to fit in the fun with the important meant too-full days, and cursory naps instead of sleep, as I strived see both sides of a festival that only lasted a few choice days. As a result, most days started around sunrise to appease the anthropologist in me, followed by throwing waterfor my (not-so) inner child, and my party-self lasted late into the night as revelers from all over Thailand and the world flooded Chiang Mais bars and clubs, where the usual close-by-1:00am rule was temporarily suspended. And this went on for a whole week.
While going through the whole week long festival would take pages, heres a single day.
After getting up at dawn, I went to the next door neighbors of the office and helped set up folding tables on the side of the street, that were quickly laden with food, snacks, drinks, fruit and desserts. Everyone was dressed up, men in button down shirts, women in beautiful sarongs with fresh flowers in their hair. Upon inquiring about the food, it became clear that many of the women had been up since at least 5, going to the market and cooking. One old lady, the matriarch of the house, apparently rises every morning at 4:30 to make food for a single monk who visits her each morning. With this, two songtaews one laden with monks in bright saffron robes, and the second even more full with brick red-clad monkspulled up. It was hard to shake the idea of two teams arriving on their respective team buses for a rival game. The monks (both teams, almost forty strong) lined up single file with their alms bowls and begun to chant in Pali. It was amazing to hear these words (usually uttered under the breath of a single monk in early morning) by so many at the same time, and the reverberation of the chant could be felt in my rib cage. After chanting, the monks blessed us, and lined up to receive alms.
Following what Nicole terms feeding the monks, we started our cultural program and were taught how to make various traditional Lanna-style tissue paper flags. Songkran is great because each day marks a different activity: the previous saw people bringing bags of sand (bags of sand?!) and piling into a chedi in the courtyard of each wat, and the following day would see the flags driven into these mounds of sand (the green and purple one was made by yours truly). The sand fits in with the general concept of the New Year (i.e. new beginnings and atonement) and is meant to offset the sand that each person has taken away from the temple in their shoes over the course of the previous year. Apparently the chedis are left to eventually be spread throughout the temple grounds by pacing feet and gusts of wind.
After breakfast and a quick nap, we headed over the other side of the city and played water. Everyone is soaked, and each passing person proceeds in ensure that no inch is missed, by dumping a fresh bucket. Pee Ann pranced around like a mischievous sprite forsaking the slightly sadistic pleasure in dumping a bucket of water on a total stranger, and went around dipping her fingers into her tiny bucket and gently sprinkling passers-by, all the while grinning ear to ear. Nicole responded by cursing whenever a particularly cold bucket was tossed her way (to be fair, she was singled out for additional treatment being a blond-haired, white girl). I responded by alternately(depending on how much water I had on hand) by remaining quietly reserved to my fate, or pursuing instant revenge, which frequently escalated very quickly.
The whole thing is very social, and water is freely shared. Someone who just doused you with gallons of icy water, would turn around and gladly allow you to fill up your bucket. Walking down the street (away from the moat and its endless supply of water) one moved between filling stations, where, after getting sufficiently soaked, one would join forces with whatever house owner had a hose, and proceed to take on the outside world together. Perhaps the most memorable of these was a little ten-year-old kid, who had an industrial hose (about an inch and a half of interior diameter) that was pumping out water, and he was loosing it on pedestrians and motorists alike. His name was Boss, and I couldnt have chosen a more apt nickname.
On this day, I brought out a camera I had that was made of plastic and was all mechanical (no electronics) figuring it was the closest to waterproof I could figure. I kept it in a Ziplock, and felt pretty good, but was amazed by the people toting either $8,000 HD videos or, nice digital SLRs with telephoto lenses, protected by the water free-for-all by a little plastic and some packing tape. I got some great shots, but the lab messed up the processing, and other than the last few frames on the roll, all the images are rendered invisible by a huge chemical stain. Oh well, May pen rai.
Again, I was blessed by my moms fetishist love of Ziplock bags, and was able to recycle a few of the approximately 1,734that she has either sent me or else wrapped all of my belongings in for the trip hereto ensure the survival of my cell phone and wallet.
Alternate names for the New Year:
Songkran (Thailand)
Thingyan (Burma)
Jackpot! (S C Johnson and Sons Corporate Headquarters, Ziplock division).
I always knew your mother was a little “off.” Now it all makes sense…