Travel-Burma/Myanmar, Thingyan Water Festival

After sharing some of my favorite pictures from our trip to Burma in last week’s Travel post, I wanted to share some of our experiences (and some more photos) with you this week.  When we arrived in Yangon, Burma, we had fallen right in the middle of Thingyan, the Burmese New Year Water Festival celebrated once a year.  Here’s our story…

As we left the airport and jumped into a cab, my husband and I were forced to roll down our windows as we realized air conditioning was a scarce commodity in Myanmar.  We would soon regret our decision for this as we pulled out of the airport and continued on our journey towards the hotel.  As the cab pulled away from the terminal and whipped around the first corner, my husband and I situated our bags in the backseat and started to pull out our camera.  As I looked down for a second to grab my sunglasses a crash of water suddenly slapped my face.  As I tried to compose myself for a moment, my mind was racing wondering, “Where the hell did that come from?”  I gasped and turned to my husband who was also in shock as we blinked the ice cold water from our eyes…mascara slowly running down my face.  Following the commotion, the cab driver laughed hysterically as if it was all part of his master plan.  As I began to realize what had happened, the driver flicked his windshield wipers on and smiled at me in the rear view mirror, I started to laugh…we had arrived right in the middle of Myanmar’s water festival!  What a fitting welcome to this once a year event.

When I spun around on the water drenched seat, I quickly caught a glimpse of our culprit. A young man holding a painter’s bucket on the side of the road, already submerging it into a large crate of water preparing for his next victim.  This was just a normal occurrence here in Yangon, especially during Thingyan.

When we originally planned my husband’s birthday trip to Myanmar, I knew it was the weekend of Thingyan, but my wildest dreams never would have prepared me for what we encountered during our trip.  As we continued on our way to the hotel, our driver (who spoke absolutely no English) would quickly mimic for us to roll-up our windows as we were approaching the next firing squad.  It became a game of who could get the window up first and remain dry, as we raced to beat the unavoidable blasts of water…either you were hot and dripping with sweat or chilly and dripping with water.  By the end of the weekend, I had grown wiser (much to my husband’s dismay) and began ducking when I spotted hoses being hoisted in the distance.  Unfortunately, this left him directly in the line of fire.

Families, teenagers, elderly couples and toddlers were all joining in on the fun.  What better way to cool off on such a hot blistery day in Myanmar?  You might as well have been sitting on the sun with temperatures reaching almost 100 degrees Fahrenheit; the water festival occurs perfectly during the dry season.  Thingyan was the perfect scapegoat for good teenagers to act bad for the day and complete strangers to soak one another.  Hey, you couldn’t get mad…it was tradition and part of the celebration!  Participating in the water festival felt like being in a food fight, wrong, but just too much fun to stop!  I must say, it’s the aftermath of the water war that is the worst…especially when my husband and I found ourselves in panic mood when our camera battery stopped working.  But it was all in the name of adventure!

Soon our camera was well again, our clothes were dry and we were on our way to a new adventure…next stop, the Ancient City of Bagan.