For the last 5 days, we have been in Chang Mai celebrating Songkron. This is the fesitival that celebrates the Thai New Year. We have just passed into the year 2556 according to the Thai Lunar Caldender! In this festival everybody celebrates with water, which means there is one big water fight for 5 days. It was fantastic fun, including locals and tourists. There was so many people with water pistols firing each other, others threw buckets of ice cold water! People lined the streets and you couldn't leave a building without getting wet. Some people even drove around in open top 4x4 cars so that they could fire water at people. The atmosphere was so good - everyone was happy and really took part in the right spirit. The symbolisim of the water fight shows that the Thai's are washing away the old year and cleansing, ready to welcome the new year.
We have also managed to visit a few sights since
Buddha with some gold leafwe have been here. We visited the most popular Buddhist Temple called Wat Phra That Doi Suthep which is situated on a hill. You have to climb over 300 steps to reach the top. It was really busy with people bringing offerings to Buddha, which is part of the celebration linked with the Thai New Year. As well as visiitng temples, there are large processions in the streets with people carrying Buddha images, as well as offerings of flowers and food, that are then taken to the temples. Everyone wears beauiful clothing and the procession lasted about 3 hours. It was really interesting to watch.
Read more at http://www.travelblog.org/
No comments:
Post a Comment