Depending on which reference text you study, the Thai word ‘Songkran’ means ‘to move upwards’, ‘to be about to change’ or ‘one day is changing to the next’. ‘Maha Songkran’, the proper full name for the traditional Thai New Year is when one year reaches its end and another is about to begin – and nowadays it is normally just shortened to ‘Songkran’. Whatever it is called, it is still the traditional celebration of the Thai New Year and officially takes place on the 13th April each year, even though it technically follows the lunar calendar. However each community has its own day for celebration, and therefore although the 13th is National Songkran day, depending on what part of Thailand you are in, you can find New Year celebrations taking place on any date from around the 11th of the month up until about the 20th. There are several traditional customs associated with this festival; one is to begin the New Year with a fresh start by giving your house, both physical and personal, a thorough cleansing. People also buy and wear new clothing. Wearing this they then on the morning of Songkran day visit a temple to bring food offerings to the monks. A ceremony then usually takes place whereby the temple’s main Buddha image is taken outside so that worshippers can pour water over it. It is also customary to pay visits to senior relatives and senior notary citizens and to pay respect to them by pouring water (usually scented) over their hands whilst wishing them a long life. Here in Pattaya as with the rest of the country, the National Songkran day is celebrated on April 13th, with the following two days also being public holidays. But the Pattaya main festival day, also called ‘Wan Lai’ or ‘Water throwing day’ doesn’t take place until April 19th. So in effect we have a week long New Year festival with events of one sort or another taking place on virtually every day over the entire period. The ‘Wan Lai’ celebrations will be covered in the next article, but here we concentrate more on the cultural events that took place this year. First of these on April 13th were as has been stated, traditional respects being paid to the temples and monks in the community. Most of these took place at the temples themselves and mostly very early in the morning (too early for your reporters), but one such event took place this year at the ‘Hard Rock’ hotel where a group of monks paid a visit and were then greeted in traditional style. An unusual attendant at this event was an Elephant who was brought in to enliven the proceedings by hopefully watering some of the attendees, but not of course the monks. However the elephant proved too well behaved and confined itself to watering the hotel’s flower beds. On the evening of April 13th, many hotels organised parties and we visited the Pattaya Marriott resort where a buffet meal had been laid out in the magnificent hotel gardens surrounding the pool. There in addition to food stalls and a barbecue there were also small boats floating in the water containing delicacies for people to help themselves to – the only problem being that in order to reach these items, you had to either kneel down or bend virtually double, either of which became increasingly more difficult as the volume of food consumed grew. The area of South Pattaya from the junction with Pattaya South Road, down to the start of Big Buddha hill had often complained that they were a forgotten part of the Songkran celebrations, so this year they had their own week long street party with several events organised in the grounds of participating hotels. Amongst these was a sand castle building competition, using sand brought it from the beach to construct traditional Thai style pagodas or Chedis. Given the limited amount of sand available, some really amazing constructions were made. Another event staged here was a fruit cutting and shaping contest using various large fruits such as pomelo, and mango to produce flower like arrangements. Again the talent that was displayed was quite astonishing. There were many events taking place all over town spread over the whole period, too many in fact to cover in person, especially with the difficulty of getting around due to extremely heavy traffic and of course the water throwing that was taking place all around, so our reporters only managed to get to one further event that took place in the Jomtien area on the evening of the 18th. This was a street party staged by a number of participating bars and other establishments in the area, the main event of which was meant to be a ‘Mr Swimsuit’ contest. Unfortunately only three people felt brave enough to parade in their swimsuits, so it was not difficult to award the first three prizes, but nevertheless a good party ensued and provided a welcome prelude to the mayhem of ‘Wan Lai’ day which was to follow. All of the photos in this article were taken by Allan, who also supplied much of the information.   To view any of the above photos in full size, just click on it.   Back to Top of Page