Country-Wide Water Fights and the Month I Almost Melted

The Legend of April

They told us in Chiang Mai. They said it again in Bangkok. Over and over, the warnings came until I could sense this impending doom that hung over us.

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Of course, when you're used to Pennsylvanian winter, every day in Thailand feels like hot season, making even humid North Carolina summers a luxuriously temperate memory. Hearing so many warnings about April had turned it into a legend that we all kind of anticipated and dreaded equally. It almost seemed like a rite of passage that, however horrible, we needed to go through. As is the nature with legends, though, we couldn’t know what was coming. Oh no, we had no idea what was coming for us.

I remember feeling confused early in the semester when people would say one day, “it’s not as hot today” because in my reality, the heat never relented. I realized what they meant when April came. I felt what they meant. There's something special in the kind of heat that makes you feel like you're melting even as you add layers of sweat throughout the day. Let me give you an example of the kind of heat we were entrenched in. One morning, I noted how refreshing it felt, dare I say even cool? I pulled out my phone to check the temperature and saw that it was at a chilling 90 degrees. I couldn’t believe that it’d come to this, that 90 degrees would feel akin to a dip in the Arctic. And while I adapted to the new food, tried to learn bits and pieces of the language, became somewhat comfortable navigating the city, I never got used to the heat in Thailand.

Songkran

Just as we’d been waiting for hot season, I’d always been anticipating another event that came along with April. Songkran is a Thai holiday that symbolizes purification, and the manifestation of that meaning is essentially a giant, country-wide water fight. I think it says something about the Thai people’s intelligence that their water festival coincides with their hottest month of the year. For just a few days, every inch of the city becomes the splash zone.

For our first taste of the festival, our directors decided to take us into Chiang Mai. We bundled everything in plastic, upon plastic, upon plastic, and loaded up on the Songthaews that would deposit us right in the city. Along the way, motorbikes passed by on the side of the Songthaew, and people on the side of the street would toss out water from buckets they had waiting. In some cases, people cranked up their hose so that a stream of water arced into the street. When we arrived, we all got initiated with a bucket of water thrown across our bodies. Then, it was time to wade into the chaos. All up and down the street, storeowners sat out with kiddie pools filled with water. They lied in way for anyone coming up the sidewalk, and some had water guns ready. Kids splashed around in the pools or carried their own water guns, and walking down the street became a tension-filled game of anticipating when the water would strike next. The closer we moved to the center of it all – Tha Pae Gate, which sits beside the city’s moat – the more hectic everything got. Of course, the farang (foreigners) had a huge part in that. While Songkran is a huge water fight, it’s still a festival and therefore a part of Thai culture. For many of the farang tourists who strode around with water guns and alarming smiles, it never seemed to be more than just a water fight. Well, there were some ads that tried to make it an excuse to drink, too, and here we’ve stumbled upon my enduring reflection on being a tourist.

This trip made tourism bother me more than it ever has before. Going into the city and seeing farang walk around without shirts or overhearing travel itineraries, I found it troubling to think of how common it is for us to traipse into a country and pluck what we want to experience without having to make the effort to really understand the context in which we venture. As much as I’ve enjoyed being a tourist and have wanted to continue being one by visiting other places, I’ve only just realized how sad it is to visit a place for everything but the people who live there. To be honest, I can’t judge. On hot days (so every day), I longed to wear a tank top, and I became more and more lax with modesty and respect in my clothing as the semester closed. I understand that it may not be realistic to visit a place for four months and adhere to every norm that shows respect to the culture you’re learning about. But shouldn’t we at least try better? I’ve always loved different cultures and sights, but what do they even mean without an understanding of the people who represent them or live in them?

Thai Cultural Arts

While April educated us on heat and Thai festivals, we also had the chance to learn other Thai and Lahu traditions through our Thai Cultural Arts class. Throughout the month, we learned dance, weaving, cooking, and painting.

Our first experience brought us to Payap University, where we watched the Christian Communications Institute (C.C.I) company perform Likay style of dance. The company exists as a cross between an old Thai cultural form of dance and Biblical stories that serve as the inspiration behind performances.

When we went, the company displayed “The Prodigal Daughter,” which is an adaptation of “The Prodigal Son” and situated in modern times within a relevant context. The young daughter in the story abandons her mother and sister to go to Bangkok with a man, and she ends up abused and unwanted. Returning home, she finds not rejection but acceptance from her mother, though the sister still resents her. At the story’s end, both sisters repent and the family is reconciled.

Ajarn ("Ah-Jon" : Professor) Sawai Chinnawong, a painter, accomplishes a similar task in taking an established Buddhist technique in painting and using it to portray Biblical stories. When he came, we all worked together to create a new piece of art.

For weaving, we didn’t learn from Thai, but from Lahu teachers. This woman whose name I will most definitely misspell – Namee Pan – possess an adeptness and skill in backstrap weaving that she has cultivated through her whole life. Observing others in her youth, she taught herself and now spends her day within the rhythmic throes of weaving.

We learned to weave again when we visited a Lahu village in the mountains and got to lace strips of bamboo into a basket. My teacher, a Lahu man whose name I unfortunately cannot remember, was one of the most patient people I’ve met.

Photo Credit: Kate Marsden

Neither one of us spoke each other’s language, so he would either show me which steps to take or communicate through our wonderful translator Thippawan. Yet, as many times as he would show me one particular section, I could not get the dang idea. Over and over again, he would come over, show me, hand it to me, and watch me go through a step or two. But the moment his eyes slid away, my hands fumbled and my brain went blank. Again. And again. He was always there to guide me again, and his patience was a kindness.

Our last experience involves one of my favorite things on earth: food. We spent one afternoon at Sorn’s restaurant, where the skilled Sornsak Sakbodin and his co-worker, a woman whose name I unfortunately did not learn, patiently walked us through the steps to make curry, beef salad, and garlic pork.

Despite the heat, April was a good month. We survived hot season, and we even had a good time during it.

#thailand #food #songkran #weaving #painting #cooking #dancing #april