Happy New Year, AGAIN!

I got the opportunity to do some New Year resolutions for the third time “this year”. The first time it was during the Occidental change into year 2013. The second, with the Lunar New Year in February. And the third it was the past weekend, when we celebrated Thailand’s New Year.

Between April 13^th and 15^th Thais celebrate Songkran, which is their traditional start of a new year.  Since 1940 the calendar year starts on January 1^st as in most of the world. However Songkran is still being celebrated in April, close to the astrological change of the year.

Once again in magical Bangkok, I resolved to visit Wat Pho and fulfill a dream: to receive a massage at the first Thai massage school. A few Airport Link and BTS stations, plus six stops in the water ferry on Chao Praya river (note: Bangkok has the best public transportations that I know) and I found myself at the temple. Wat Pho massage school houses the traditional literature on Thai massage as an alternative medical therapy, which I studied in Chiang Mai.

 

It was double special being there for Songkran and seeing the traditional celebrations besides the carnival-like water fights. People go to the temple to pay respect to the elders and monks and to receive blessings through the sprinkling of perfumed water to start a clean new year. Some people build sand castles by the chedi, which signify giving back the dust they brought on their shoes from the temple to their homes during the year.

After these emotional and spiritual experiences I had a failed attempt to shop for a Kindle. Bangkok has huge malls where you can find thousands of mobile phones and tablets of all kinds except for eBooks. In any case, at the shopping mall area I got my first experience with the more pagan Songkran celebration. Thousands of Thais and many farangs, loaded with colorful water guns, sprinkled each other and laughed. It was a rear occasion to see the Thais being naughty.

The next day Gejo came back from Argentina and, in our way to dinner, we became part of a major water fight. Our hotel was located in a neighborhood of serious celebrators. There, water guns were not the munitions of choice. Instead, young and not-so-young Thais were armed with hoses and huge buckets, some of them filled with iced water! Along the few blocks from the hotel to the restaurant, we got drenched. I also received some talc-water mix on my face. We came back to the hotel shaking with cold (the second time I am cold in nine months) and renewed from so much water and laughter, ready for another year.