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As was mentioned in the previous article, one of the traditions of the Thai New Year festival of Songkran was to wish respected people and relatives a Happy New Year by gently pouring water over their hands.
Whereas for the elderly and people such as monks, this tradition is retained and respected, for the rest of us, its anything goes.
As most of you are now aware, over the years this water pouring has escalated into water throwing using any device to hand ranging from a manufactured water pistol to a hose pipe and from a small pail to a large bucket.
Somewhere along the way another tradition arose of water not being enough, even if made icy cold, and the need made to add a more permanent reminder of the event in the form of a talc and water paste mix being smeared, plastered or any other way you care to put it, covering you all over from head to foot.
With the Pattaya main water throwing day not taking place until the 19th of the month but with the National Songkran day being on the 13th, this results in virtually non stop water throwing taking place over the entire seven day period.
It is however at its wildest on the 13th and again on the 19th, but any time in-between that anyone dares to venture out they become fair game.
This year once again the authorities attempted to exercise some control over the more extreme elements by banning high powered water guns and also imposing a 6 PM curfew on water throwing. This had, as would be expected, mixed success – some parts of the town reported the curfew being respected whereas in others, water throwing continued right up to and beyond midnight.
They also announced the rather bizarre regulation that pickup trucks containing people standing in the back throwing water should not be travelling in excess of 90 kph (about 60 miles an hour). In fact given the levels of traffic that ensued, 9 kph would have been excessive.
Knowing that the actual Wan Lai day of the 19th was likely to produce the largest amount of mayhem, we restricted our coverage of this side of the festival to a single day out amongst it all.
And on this occasion we operated from the relative safety of my car with doors and windows securely shut, and with me as the driver and my colleague Allan taking all the photos through the car windscreen and side windows.
For the best part of five hours we navigated through the sheer lunacy taking place on all the streets of both Jomtien and Pattaya, at times barely proceeding a few feet at a time, and all the time having water thrown and paste smeared over our vehicle. Fortunately I had taken the precaution of filling the screen washer bottle before setting off, for it was sorely needed.
Here follows a selection of the many photos taken, all by Allan using both his camera and mine. Most are self explanatory and hopefully give a picture of another wild and wet Songkran festival.
To view any of the above photos in full size, just click on it.
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