Jeremy Holton Australia/Thailand artist/teacher: Songkran

Its
Songkran here in

Thailand

,
the Thai New Year and water festival. This is the hottest and muggiest time of the year before the monsoon
breaks. Although I have to say that up
here in Issan the weather is not too hot. It has been cooler this year and we have had early rains.

A few days
prior to the actual Songkran holiday everybody started gambling. Gambling is illegal in

Thailand

but
the Thais must be amongst the greatest gamblers in the world. It’s no exaggeration to say that half the
villagers were gambling. Initially with
a variation of roulette played in the wasteland areas at the back of the
houses. Usually several groups of 6 to a
dozen people often children have their own group.

Later, in
the last few days there have been many groups playing a form of poker for quite
high stakes (in Thai terms). These games
last all day and often right through the night with people coming and going
from the game. There are no police in
the village but the games are usually carried discretely out of sight.

I have
learnt how to play the poker game (although of course not for money as that
would be illegal) and it’s a variation of the game of Brag that I played in my
youth. It’s a 3 card game with no draw
and the top hands are normal in descending order there is 3 of a kind (with
aces high), then a straight (Q,K,A high). Then it gets complicated as the only pairs that count as far as I can
determine are court cards provided that the third card is also a court card. The lowest hands are calculated by adding together
the value of the cards (court cards being 10) and then just using the last
digit so 7, 3 and 6 would become 6. If
two people have the same value hand then the hand is replayed with the previous
joint winners not having to pay into the kitty but any new players having to
pay a proportion of the kitty to buy into the hand.

Everybody
obviously enjoys the game and there is much chat and slapping down of
cards. It is generally accepted that
this is what people do during the week of Songkran. I guess that the weather is not conducive to
physical activities so people relax doing what they enjoy. It seems pretty harmless but as with all
gambling there is a risk that people become addicted and lose their savings and
property.

At the
start of Songkran the lady across the road had a friend come to stay an
attractive looking woman of 35 who has worked as a bargirl and knows some
English.. When I met her I asked her
what her name was and she replied “My name is ……..” I waited for the rest of the sentence and it
never came so I prompted her with “Your name is ……” and she replied “Yes”. Clearly I was getting nowhere I started again saying “What’s your name
then?” By this time Waree was in
hysterics and realizing my problem I said “You mean your name is Is?” Yes she replied. People wonder why its sometimes difficult to
communicate with Thais.

Songkran is
a sort of baptism process where you bless everybody by pouring water over
them. The monks come around and you pour
water over them and you go to the temple and pour water over many small buddhas
and statues of the king and venerable monks etc even the occasional coke bottle
that Thais like to leave for the spirits.

This has
become a general excuse for everybody to spend the whole week throwing water at
each other. Which is really a lot of fun
with great hilarity all around. I spent
the best part of one day the other side of the village with a group ambushing
every vehicle to pass with water and dancing to music. There are groups like this every 100 metres
or less around every village. So you
just get soaked all the time. I had a
bottomless beer mug which helped the occasion but caused me an horrendous
hangover later in the day.

Tau took me
on his motorcycle as Waree was otherwise engaged playing cards and when I
arrived they wanted me to sort out their sound system. As always they had 6 huge 300 watt speakers
attached to one small amplifier which I suspect had blown a fuse. Their cabling was a total mess and seemed to
have been done largely by trial and error, part of the problem being that the
sockets are labeled in English and of course nobody here can read English.

Eventually
we got a new amplifier and I managed to connect the cables in some sort of
logical order. Of course there were
power cables everywhere and water splashing around so I was a bit concerned for
my safety but only an ignorant Farang would worry about such matters. So we spent several hours dancing, throwing
water at everybody who passed and drinking beer.

I got
soaked (with water) so many times during the week that I took to skulking in my
studio to avoid getting wet again.

The village
nurse can and invited me to a function at the nursing post which turned out to
be a show for “old people” I was honored to be invited but disappointed to have
been so accurately classified. There was
lots of Thai dancing and even games. They
recorded my name and I signed for something but I have no idea what it was. I suspect I would have been given a present
but we left before they handed them out so I missed out on that. They even had the men playing a game where
they dangled something link a cucumber on a bit of string from their belts and
used it to move a ball to the finishing line. Very suggestive and very funny. Fortunately I managed to avoid being co-opted
into the game.

Towards the
end of the week we took a whole crowd of people to “the beach”. We do this every Songkran. Its an amazing experience. First the kids put in the back of the truck
one of the huge earthenware water containers they use here for storing rain
water. Then they filled it with water
and everybody got in. Later I counted a
total of 22 people in our truck that we took to the beach. The weight was so great that the tyres looked
flat so we wasted 30 minutes trying to get some air.

We drove
about 20 kms to Phompisai passing through about 8 bans (villages) in each one
we were flagged down about every 60 metres by a crowd of revelers dancing to
music, drinking, covering our faces with talcum powder and of course throwing
water at us. We were dry inside with windows and doors locked but our 14
passengers in the back got soaked. They
gave good account of themselves by throwing equal amounts of water back.

After
Phompisai we were on the main road but we were still pelted at every
village. There were many of trucks on
the road all going to or from “the beach” and they were all loaded with people
and water containers. We couldn’t go
more than about 60 kph due to the number of people in the back, the people on
the roads throwing water and the other trucks. So we all slowly rumbled along pelting each other with water like
sailing ships in a great sea battle.

“The beach”
is a large sandbank on the

Mekong

River

with several
thousand people splashing about with hired inflatables or sitting on mats
eating and drinking under bamboo shades. We stayed there about 4 hours although it was cloudy and rained a few
times. The water was coming up fast and
some of the stalls were ankle deep. We
had a good time though.

The way
back was just as torturous as coming with lots of young people dancing on the
road forcing us to stop so that they could smear white paste on the faces of
the girls in the back of our truck. I
can see the advantages of this system to a young man. In the papers over the period prior to
Songkran they were warning young ladies to be careful in their clothing as of
course they keep getting wet and I imagine it could be a bit like a wet –shirt
competition. However the girls here wear
very conservative clothes all the time except for those who have farang
husbands or boyfriends and it is expected that they would wear more western
style clothing.

Apart from
being a lot of fun Songkran is another example of the way in which people in
the village build and consolidate relationships. You make lots of friends throwing water,
dancing and drinking with people.

Well it is hot

The girl across the road enjoying Songkran

A determined water chucker

The Nursing Post where the old peoples New Years show was performed

Adam punching another little boy. No idea why.

Adam coverting some crisps

Guilty success

Some of the performers

Pang and me

Pang looking very beautiful but old for 15

Pang, her friend and lovely Waree

Old people

Young people

Getting ready to perform

Lovely lady dancing

Lovely lady's lovely daughter dancing

Pang always posing for my camera

We got back and were invited to see what was cooking next door. Tau's friend had caught them with his good hunting and digging dog. I worked out the it is a civet (sort of cat) dead of course.