April 13 – Songkran in Thailand

Posted on April 13, 2015

Today starts a 3-day water fight in Thailand!

It's all about celebrating the Thai New Year, and like New Year's celebrations in Laos and Cambodia, tradition calls for a giant country-wide, multi-day water sprinkle, squirt, slosh, and gush. 

Whether it is water shooting out from water pistols or elephant trunks, from hoses or buckets – it's water, water everywhere.

Here's something that has never
happened to me, not even once,
when I was walking around cities
in Southern California!

See, I've never walked down the street, here in Southern California, and gotten sprayed by a stranger with a water gun. No matter how hot it gets, no stranger has ever turned a hose on me or sloshed an entire bucket of water on my car. (For one thing, we're in a drought, and we have no water to waste!)

But during Songkran in Thailand, you can expect strangers to do exactly that:

...shoot you with a water gun...

...spray you with a hose...

...or slosh you with a bucket.

All this water play grew out of the tradition of water pouring, symbolically washing away sins. Many people still do the more respectful pouring-of-water onto the bottom of a statue of Buddha or over their teachers' hands.

And then they go out and do this:

Also on this date:

Anniversary of the coining of the word “microscope” 

American Indian Awareness Week Begins (April 13 – 19, 2015) 

National Scrabble Day 

Thomas Jefferson's birthday

Apollo 13 Day

Anniversary of the arrival of the first elephant in the U.S. 

Sham el-Nessim in Egypt

International Dark Sky Week begins (April 13 - 18)

Plan ahead:

Check out my Pinterest boards for:

• April holidays   
• April birthdays 
• Historical anniversaries in April

And here are my Pinterest boards for:

• May holidays 
• May birthdays 
• Historical anniversaries in May