The Thai New Year lasts a full seven days, and it doesn’t arrive on the first of January but somewhere in the middle of April. The celebrations unfold in a thoroughly unusual way — where a European New Year calls for your finest outfit, a Thai one calls for flip-flops, swimwear, and clothes you won’t mind ruining. Let me tell you, and show you, exactly how it goes.
But first, a little of the dull-but-fascinating kind of background. The Thai New Year is called Songkran, a word borrowed from Sanskrit meaning “passage” or “transition”. And indeed, on these dates — the 13th to the 15th of April — two transitions occur at once: an astronomical one, as the sun moves from the constellation of Pisces into Aries, and a natural one, as the hot season gives way to the rainy season. Which is precisely why the swimwear and flip-flops are non-negotiable.
No, the rains don’t obligingly start pouring the moment the new year begins. But water pours from every possible source regardless — flung from buckets, sprayed from hoses, fired from water pistols, poured from bottles. Thais douse one another, and anyone else within range, as a symbolic summons to the rainy season, in the hope of a good rice harvest. The celebrations run for a full week, and while the early days still leave you a fighting chance of getting somewhere dry, on the day of the main, city-wide celebration, there’s no chance of that whatsoever.
Let me tell you about one such day. Right at the condo where I was living, and directly opposite it, three separate “dousing stations” had sprung up — getting even a hundred metres from the building and staying dry would have counted as a minor miracle. And to make things livelier still, every group had its own music blasting — Thais like it loud, and they like it with bass. The condo staff had accordingly installed, in the ground-level car park, a subwoofer of genuinely unreasonable size, thumping hard enough to rattle the windows. Needless to say, I’d grown to hate it within the hour, since it made working next to impossible. So I was glad of the excuse to head out for dinner, and, by sheer good fortune, made it outside without getting wet. Weaving through the back streets, I reached Jomtien Beach almost entirely dry — the roads along the way were oddly quiet, almost too quiet for a festival. That’s because the festival itself, or at least one whole side of it, was in full, roaring swing right there on Jomtien — the road that runs the length of its five-kilometre stretch of beach.
Within two hundred metres, I was as drenched as if I’d just climbed out of the sea. People lining the roadside doused everyone passing by, and those on bikes and in cars returned fire in kind. Pickup trucks, their beds packed with people, fought pitched water battles with one another. Tuk-tuks — the local shared taxis — pulled over so that not a single passenger would escape dry. And crowning it all was a municipal truck fitted with an enormous tank, drenching everyone in its path with a great fountain of water.
The Night Market, the local food market, was closed, of course. I had a choice: loop back along a parallel street, or dive straight back into the thick of it. Naturally, I chose the latter — not least because I’d worked up the nerve to pull out my phone and take a few photographs.
Songkran isn’t only about the water — there’s also the smearing of clay, or the dusting of talcum powder. Both water and clay stand as symbols of washing away the past year. The clay is smeared across the face and body, and this is nothing like painting neat stripes on your own face at home in front of a mirror for a costume party — it’s fundamentally about interaction. Those standing at the roadside reach out with a light touch of the fingers to mark those passing by. Is there any sense of distaste in it? None at all. Even for me, with my considerable personal space requirements, it brought nothing but pleasant feelings — because the Thais always signal their intention first, and only touch your face once you’ve given your consent. And it’s all done joyfully, accompanied by lovely wishes, usually in Thai, so beyond “Happy New Year” you’re rarely any the wiser as to what’s actually being said.
I left Jomtien completely soaked and with my face thoroughly smeared with clay. But that, it turned out, was nothing compared to what awaited on Beach Road — the road running along the beachfront, an extension of the lively Walking Street — and Second Road, running parallel to it. Even as I approached Second Road at a set of traffic lights, I felt a powerful jet from a water pistol hit me square in the back; turning round, I discovered it had come from a police car. Not long after, on Second Road itself, whole buckets of water were being poured through that same car’s open window.
Water and clay tend to spare only taxi drivers and delivery riders, presumably because they’re seen as doing important work — though they can still be doused or smeared if someone feels like it, and are certainly not immune to the occasional stray splash.
Water poured in from every direction. Some of it warm, having sat in the sun all day; other times, you’d be doused entirely by the book — with ice-cold water. It was extraordinarily invigorating, if a little chilly at times. Ice was brought in by the truckload, straight in the beds of pickups.
Second Road had become one single mass, all moving in the same direction — being a one-way street. Some rode in cars, some on bikes, some walked, some danced. And uniting them all was the water pouring from every side, and the hands smearing clay wherever they could reach. It felt like one shared surge of joy and delight. There was nothing aggressive or reckless about it. It was gentle, almost childlike — as though every one of these adults had traded their jobs, their offices, their businesses and important obligations for nothing more than a bowl, a water pistol, and a handful of clay. Think back to how it felt to be joyfully carefree as a child — that’s exactly what this was.
Even the police standing along the pedestrian cordon weren’t spared the fun. However stern and serious they tried to keep their faces, it was impossible to look at them without smiling — dozens, hundreds of hands had smeared them with clay over the course of the day, until it had run down their black uniforms and turned them almost entirely white.
It was a festival of joy, of togetherness, and of cleansing.
