Songkran!

I know I already made a post for today, but I just HAVE to talk about the traditional Thai(Random Note: When I went back and edited this, I realized I put Chinese instead of Thai. LOL) water festival known to many as Songkran!~ Unfortunately, I don't have many pictures because I figured my camera would get soaked along with me in the chaos of water fights, hehe. But what I do have is a pretty good idea of what the festival is about.

I probably should have mentioned earlier, I am not going to make this an information blog, rather an experience one. So I'm not going to go into too much detail about why the holiday was created and such. The basic understanding I have is that it has been a Thai tradition for youth to pour water onto the hands of elders in a way to give blessing to each other. This was how the day started out for the family.

We first went to the nearby Buddhist temple to give offerings to the monks and pray. Afterward, we went to our relatives' houses to pour water and flower petals onto their hands. Here is me pouring the water on my khun yaai (grandma on mom's side).

A bit later in the afternoon, we went out to participate in the Songkran. I sort of like to describe it like Halloween's Trick or Treat night in America...except with water. Basically, you sit in the back of a pick-up truck and drive, throwing water at anyone participating in the festivities...and even some who are not. LOL Below is a picture of my aunt filling up barrels of water we would use as ammunition. She happened to be the driver of the pick-up truck too.

When we first started out, we all climbed into the bed of the truck. It was me, Fook, Flim, Tor(little kid that is staying at our neighbor aunt's house), Parn, Just(cousin, and I love her nickname LOL), Nathalie(French friend of Fook who came to Thailand), and two other boys no one has told me who their names were or even how they are related to us. LOL Oh well, they were fun. :3

Being the new person I was, I thought we would be driving at "parade-float" speed. But I was totally wrong. No, participating in Songkran means you are going 60+ km and hour down all kinds of roads, hanging on for dear life at you're pelted with water. LOL As terrifying as that sounds, it was actually a lot of fun. Except when this one group threw this huge amount of water at me and Fook. It literally felt like they threw a pile of bricks on us. Ouch...

But other than that, it was exactly as I mentioned before with being like Trick or Treat. Not only would other people in trucks throw water at us, but also the people on the ground at their houses and businesses. Some smart participators put ice blocks in their water containers that would make the water ice cold once in landed on you. That was always an interesting surprise, hehe.

We stopped in the city to watch the Songkran parade before getting back into the truck to fight again. At which point somehow a small gecko got into the bed of the truck and was squirming around. I, along with every girl there, hate those geckos. The boys of course knew this and would catch the gecko to throw at us, making the situation much worse. Thankfully, Flim finally caught the bugger and threw it at one of the nearby Songkran participators. LOL

By the end of it all, I was happily tired and slept well that night~

Oh! And before I close this post, I have a picture from the night before the Songkran. There was a fair for the holiday and one of the activities there was a goat pen where you could buy milk to feed the baby goats. In the middle of all the goats, there was a tiny monkey that was climbing all over everything, even the goats. They did not seem like they appreciated the sudden impact of a monkey jumping on their backs for a ride. LOL Here's a picture I got of him. He was so cute~



 Two posts today~ Yay~ Enjoy, enjoy~

*~*Miki of Feathers*~*