Happy Songkran!

(Katie)

Or, in English, Happy New Year!

Happy Thais in a jeep who wanted us to take their picture

Yes, that's right, it's here again already!

A second after I took this picture, she re-thought her attack plan and squirted straight into my face

If you've ever had trouble keeping your resolutions and wished for another, mid-year chance to scrap them and start over, the Thais have you covered. They like New Years festivities so much, they celebrate it three times a year. They've adopted partying on Jan. 1 from the western calendar, Lunar New Year from China, and, most importantly for Thais, Songkran from India. Basically, they've never heard of a holiday they didn't like. That makes them my kind of people.

Michael and friends

Songkran means "passing into", and it's celebrated in Laos, Myanmar and Cambodia under different names. Here, it occurs at the end of the dry season, and it's a massive water party in the hopes that all that good-spirited water warfare will bring blessings of lots of rain during the rainy season. It's also a religious holiday, when the monks bless the statues of Buddha. Mostly, though, it's an all-out sopping wet party in the streets throughout the country, and nowhere is the party more rockin' than in Chiang Mai.

Surprise attack!

Officially, Songkran occurs on April 13, 14 and 15, although in Chiang Mai it starts and ends a day earlier and later. People grab water guns, buckets, hoses, or whatever else they can think of to drench their fellow revelors.

Killer instinct

They shut down all the major roads in the city center and people line the streets, while others jump into open-topped vehicles of all sorts. Then, they basically splash the be-jeebus out of each other from mid-morning until sundown. There's never any animosity to it, and (usually) if you've had enough water in the face and let them know, they'll refrain from throwing more at you.

I can't remember when I've had more silly, ridiculous fun. My favorite part was watching the children get so excited about chasing people down with buckets that were almost too heavy for them to carry.

like a crispy, thin pancake made from lots of strings of batter. It was yummy.

Well, that, and all of the amazing fair food.

Coconut ice cream in a coconut

Everyone dresses in brightly colored Hawaiian-style shirts and wears chains of flowers, and wherever you look, everyone is smiling their widest smiles, waiting to hurl massive volumes of water at you. Michael and I played like kids in it for four days, taking a one-day break in the middle to zip through the top of the rainforest at The Gibbon Experience; see his entry for more about that. Great, great fun.

Shooting on the run

Oh, and the best part: you get to make resolutions again! So, it doesn't even matter that mine (staying better in touch) never really got off the ground in January. World, get ready for a whole new, e-mail-whipping-out Katie! But, world, please don't set your expectations too high. I'm still drying off.

Drenched

Chiang Mai, Thailand