Songkran and My Birthday

    So there is this big water festival in all of Thailand. It basically is Thailand's New Year celebration. I know it is weird time, but that doesn't make the festival any less fun. It is actually scheduled on the hottest part of the whole year for Thailand, and those days (13-15 of April) just happened to be right on my birthday. Now some cities in Thailand celebrate for a longer period of time, but my city just celebrated it for the three days. Basically the festival starts out with a light sprinkling of water over the hands of respected people, such as monks, parents, and grandparents. Then, right after the hottest part of the day, starts the onslaught of a huge water fight. I mean everyone is involved, and no one is safe. I even had an old lady through ice cold water one me. Another part is to put powder on the faces of the opposite sex. I don't really know what the tradition was about, but I had a lot of fun with the whole thing. And my birthday was apart of it!

So another tradition is to sort of give the Buddha statues a bath with a special liquid. 

This was the light sprinkle of my host grandmother. She in return blessed me and wish for a good future for me.

This was the start. My host mom bought us all shirts just for the festival. They basically said make me wet or I'm not afraid to get wet, but in Thai.

We got right into it right away. There were people lining the streets wherever we went. We couldn't make it anywhere without getting soaked.

We road around in the back of a truck the whole time, giving us the upper hand. That is until we had run out of water and had to refill.

Basically if you road a motorcycle you got bombarded with both water and powder, and there was no way to escape being drenched.

This is the powder thing I was talking about. Anyone could come up to you and ask to put it on your face. It was an interesting experience.

And this is what you end up after getting powder on your face...

Just some overview pictures. We did have a water gun but only one.

Another overview. We really had lots of fun.

There was this really cool place that had a foam maker. They allowed anyone to go run a jump in it. The only bad part was accidentally eating some of (Yuck!).

This is what songkran can do to you. This is a before and after photo, but no I didn't get punched I swear.

   The last day was my birthday. My host mom took me to a temple early in the morning to give food to the monks and to earn merit for my life. Thais believe it to be very important to do earn merit on special occasions like a birthday. After that we went to get ice cream (what I didn't know was there was a cake as well). Then it was a normal day of songkran with water and all.

The traditional merit earning activities I did on my birthday.

My birthday celebration at the ice cream shop.

    After it was all over we were all pretty tired. We went to the local social place to relax, and we found that they were having a puppet show. I got one cool addition to my birthday...

If you look closely you can see the people behind me controlling the puppet. It was really cool.

We all took a group picture with it as well.

      We all headed home after that, tired after the long songkran tradition. What a great end to my eighteenth year of life. Now I'm looking forward to the next big thing coming my way: my parents and older brother coming to visit me right here in Thailand! I can't wait, and I'll be sure to post about it. Till then...