Songkran Festival

A couple weeks ago I traveled to Chiang Mai, Thailand for a festival called Songkran. It's the Thai New Year and how long it lasts varies from city to city. In Chiang Mai it was about 4 days. I think it was supposed to be 3 officially but some people wanted to keep the party going. The moment you walk outside you have to be ready to get wet. People are spraying you with hoses, dumping buckets on you, or shooting you with water guns. I guess the meaning behind it is it's supposed to wash away the old year and welcome in the new. This is something I've been meaning to go experience while in Asia since I read an article about unique festivals around the world (maybe try to do Holi next year). It happens throughout the country, but the major cities are the best places to see it with locals and tons of tourists packing the streets. The amount of water guns you see for say is unbeeeeelievable. You got your little dinky ones, some bigger Super Soaker guns and then backpack tanks strapped to a hose that can pump out some water pressure. It was definitely awesome. At times I felt bad for people that were in no mood to get wet. I saw two girls running down the sidewalk with their suitcases as people outside shops sprayed them with water. Hopefully nothing electronic inside was damaged, but there's not a lot of mercy during Songkran. If you're in a tuk-tuk with nothing to defend yourself, and you're waiting at a traffic light, you're done. Also, I thought people would be a little territorial over their own water supply to refill buckets/guns/whatever but everyone was very friendly and welcomed us to refill in their big trash can. People brought in huge blocks of ice to put in them for that extra shock value. To be honest, it was no fun to be hit with warm water on an already hot day so I preferred being refreshed with the ice water but some friends didn't. I'd recommend everyone go to Thailand to see what Songkran is like. Make sure to take precautions like wearing safety goggles (I also used ear plugs) and plastic cases to protect phones. I can't speak for what it's like in the other cities like Phuket and Bangkok but Chiang Mai already has a cool atmosphere so it's even better with Songkran.



Another reason I traveled to Thailand was to reunite with some teacher friends from Austria. Some of them were teaching in another part of the country and one more flew from Canada to hang out with all of us. So it was also great to catch up with some friends.

Some major highlights besides Songkran throughout the week I was there were going to an elephant sanctuary, zip-lining, watching a Muay Thai fight and doing a Thai cooking class.

I've done zip-lining before and the Thai cooking class was nice, but being with some elephants up close was a unique experience. These are elephants that were rescued from logging camps and tourist spots for people to ride elephants. Most people probably don't think of what goes on behind the scenes as you ride on one of these elephants but there's a lot of cruelty. So instead in their new home, people come to feed them, cover them with mud (protects them from bacteria) and then bathe them afterwards. I was surprised to find that the elephant skin was actually quite bristly with a lot of hairs sticking out of them. I thought it would just be like feeling some old leather. The elephant sanctuary is called Mae Rim Elephant Sanctuary and they always look for volunteers to act as tour guides. They said if you stay for about 3 weeks then room and board is fully covered. I could see myself taking some time off from teaching and hanging out with elephants every day for a month. They are awesome animals.

Watching an evening of Muay Thai was pretty cool too. It was the first time I had been to any sort of boxing match. We met some other tourists from Canada and Gibraltar that were knowledgeable about the sport which made watching it more enjoyable. All types of people were represented during the many fights we watched. There was a fight between two foreigner women and some very young kids also fought. I can only imagine how much tougher fighters those kids are going to be when they grow up. Since I don't know much about Muay Thai I can't say why exactly but before every fight there was a bit of a ritual. Sometimes it was just walking around the ring but other times one fighter would do almost like a dance in the middle of the ring while the opponent watched. Not sure if it was because they were a challenger or not.

Below are just a few of the many videos I took, but I can't upload anything directly to this article over 100 MB or about 10 seconds so here are just a few short clips from Songkran and going to the river with the elephants. I plan on making a longer video compiling all of the stuff I did in Chiang Mai at a later time. Also turn down the volume a bit because I think I forgot to adjust for that when I added background music.