Like every Thai city during mid-April, Chiang Mai hosts two types of the water-splashing festival - the traditional and the modern.
Songkran, the 'water-throwing festival', is Thailand's most important celebration and takes place from April 13 to 15 each year. It marks the traditional Thai New Year and is at a time when temperatures hover around 40 degrees Celsius. The practice of splashing water helps to beat the heat but, as first-time participants quickly find out, there is splashing and then there is splashing.
The traditional way of celebrating New Year embodies everything that is endearing about Thai culture - respect and consideration for others, a flair for decoration and sanuk (a love of fun). The more modern method is a full-on, free-for-all water war, fought with buckets and toy weapons. Foreign visitors are much more likely to witness the latter.
Songkran is thought to have originated among the ethnic Tai people who migrated south from China into Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam, and was originally a fertility rite to ensure adequate rain for a good harvest.
Each of the three days of the festival is associated with a different activity. The first, Wan Songkran Long, is the last day of the old year and begins with the letting off of firecrackers to chase away evil spirits. Houses are cleaned and scrubbed and Buddha images are symbolically bathed. In Chiang Mai, Buddha statues from the major temples are lined up for the Songkran Parade, which takes place in the afternoon and goes along Tha Pae and Ratchadamnoen roads to Wat Phra Singh. The parade is headed by the Phra Sihing, the city's most highly revered image, and the road is lined with people ready to bathe the statues with lustral water.
Wan Nao, the second day, is traditionally spent preparing food to offer to monks the next day, as well as taking sand to the temples to replace the grains that were carried out on the soles of shoes after visits during the previous year. The sand is piled into makeshift stupas (moulded structures) and decorated with colourful pennants, some depicting the animals of the Chinese zodiac. Another ritual is the placing of support sticks around the Bo tree. These forked branches are stripped of bark and brightly painted then adorned with a spray of flowers before being propped against the trees.
On Wan Phaya Wan, the third day, the morning is spent offering food and new robes to the monks in return for their spiritual guidance. Some Thais also buy and symbolically release birds, turtles and fish. Later in the day, people visit older relatives, who bless the youngsters by sprinkling water over their left shoulders, a practice known as rot nam dam hua.
