Songkran 2550

Things I learned over the holiday week:

1. Songkran is a Buddhist New Year’s festival, and is based on the lunar calendar from the time of the Buddha. At some point in time Thailand switched to a solar calendar like the west, but they still use the date from the lunar calendar, which means it’s currently 2550 in Thailand, but they actually have the year change over on the solar calendar when we do. Yeah.
2. Songkran is supposed to be a break from the steamy summer wrath of Mother Nature. This year she wasn’t feeling the wrath vibe and decided to give us a break on the temperature. It was very hot the week before Songkran, and then immediately afterwards, but while the entire country was having one huge water fight there was no sun to be seen and temperatures would have been quite pleasant if I had not been soaking for hours on end riding at 2 mph down city streets in the back of a pickup truck as hundreds of complete strangers constantly drenched us with water.
3. I thought Thai children were extremely polite and reserved. Songkran is the exception that makes up for the rest of the year. Any human being that would purposely dump buckets of ice water on visibly shivering people in the back of a truck after dark better be on their best behavior for the other 361 days.
4. Touching members of the opposite sex is frowned upon in public in Thailand, except during Songkran, when many, many men (and a few women) walk right up to anyone and everyone and rub handfuls of baby powder into their cheeks. They get you from the front, from behind, from every direction. I think more people touched my face over the last week than during the last 26 years of my life combined. Really. I asked several Thai people about this custom, it’s origins, what it represented, and the only answer I got was that it was a chance for men to touch women’s’ faces. Somehow I suspect there used to be more to the story.
5. Some of the baby powder was laced with menthol. Menthol stings when it’s rubbed into your cheeks. Let’s not talk about when it gets in your eyes.
6. Although partying is more intense in some sections of the city, you can be Songkraned anywhere, at any time from any direction, even if you just changed out of your wet clothes into dry ones.
7. (Almost) everything closes during Songkran, so if you’re used to eating in restaurants for every meal, good luck finding food. Of course the meat vendors are still open, we can’t go without meat on a stick/and or string for even a day now can we? Luckily Pizza Co. doesn’t observe this tradition.
8. It’s illegal to sell alcohol during Songkran, although no one actually stops selling it. Some people protest this hypocrisy with marches during the festivities, demanding that no one drink in the streets during the holiday (but they don’t care if you stand with a beer on the sidewalk, as long as you don’t step into the street).
9. Songkran is amazing and unlike anything I’ve experienced anywhere else in the world, and the Thai people really know how to throw one amazing, four-day-long, country-wide party. If you think a kiss at midnight starts the year right, you need a good Songkraning.