The Thai New Year (Sonkran) takes place over 4 days of festivities which started this year on April 12. To ring in the year 2553, everyone took to the streets and threw water on each other, a derivation of the Buddhist practice of dribbling a bit of water on the monks and washing the hands of elders as a sign of respect and renewal. I was in Chiang Rai for all this, and as a small town in a fairly agricultural setting, everyone has pick-up trucks. So what had developed is that the streets are bumper to bumper with trucks, each of them carrying a 50 gallon barrel or two of water - many times ice water - which is thrown by the bucketful at anyone and everyone. So thousands of people are soaking wet, hooting and dancing, and unless you have a car with windows that work or wrap your cell phone and camera in plastic bags it is best to remain at home.
Stef met me in Chiang Rai for all this, and after four days of dodging trucks and people with water guns and hoses, we took a bus to Laos. We had thought that Sonkran was over, but Laos starts three days later, so we were doused once more as we crossed by ferry to this Communist country.
The people are even more fanatical about watr throwing, adding talcum powder, paint, and the oily soot from the bottom of the wood-fired cooking pots to the mix, making everyone look absolutely filthy. But they dance in the streets (the men all seemimg to impersonate women in a blurring of gender lines) til curfew sends them home to dinners of sticky rice and steamed catfish.
The boat pictured above is the public transport available from Huay Xai at teh Thai border, to Luang Prabang, a two-day trip on wooden benches and little more than a hole in the floor for a toilet. But you bond with your fellow passengers, we met a family from Switzerland who had been on teh road for 7 months, two photographers from France working on a book about life on the Mekong, and a few English and Dutch as well as a group of students just learning to play guitar and ukelale.
No comments:
Post a Comment