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Tuesday, April 15, 2008

Splash Away~~

This is my third year celebrating Songkran or more well known as Water Festival. I usually celebrate at Penang island except for this year. It was the first year that the state’s Songkran Festival is held on the mainland. Lim Guan Eng our new chief minister who made the changes. He said there are 7 temples in our state and the festival will be celebrated in different temples every year.

Nice move I must say, otherwise I won’t even know that at Bukit Mertajam have a Wat or two (the other one is the one where mistakenly went in and end up seeing the whole place is empty and nearly gave up and go to the island's Wat instead). I have some dificulties in finding this Wat Rajaphohong Buddhist Temple that situated in Ara Kuda, Bukit Mertajam. I never even have been near to that road before.

Thanks to TCC's direction, otherwise I would have miss out a whole load of fun. We reached just right on time, right before me and B looses our mind due to the kids (his 2 bro and a sis + my sis = S.O.S.) whining and questioning on why we took so long to reach.




Wat Rajaphohong Buddhist Temple at Ara Kuda, Bukit Mertajam






“The Thai New Year (Thai: สงกรานต์ Songkran) is celebrated every year on 13 April to 15 April. It is also celebrated in Laos (called pi mai lao or 'Lao New Year' in Lao), Cambodia, Myanmar (where it is called Thingyan), and by the Dai people in Yunnan, China. Sri Lanka also celebrates a similar festival called Sinhalese and Tamil New Year coincide with this festival, and in India, the Assamese, Bengali, Oriya,Tamil, Punjabi, and Malayali New Years fall on the same dates. “ wikipedia.


I thought Songkran is the New Year for Thais only until now. Besides throwing water to each other, people who celebrate Songkran go to Wat (Monastery) to pray and give food to monks but I went there feed myself and play (OOPs.. shouldn’t have mention that don’t I.. @@”).

Oh well, Songkran is also about making New Year resolutions - to refrain from bad behavior (I wonder if my naughtiness is consider bad?!), or to do good things (be naughty but nice?? lol). It is a time for cleaning and renewal (Sound like some facial wash slogans ^^).


They have stalls selling foods and various items.



They even have DVD stall??!!

They have tradition such as carry handfuls of sand to their neighborhood monastery in order to recompense the dirt that they have carried away on their feet during the rest of the year. The sand is then sculpted into stupa-shaped piles and decorated with colorful flags. I see they made a competition out of that ritual.


Judges giving marks to the sand competition


Pardon me but the stupa-shaped look like poop

wait-a-min..
I'm missing something here..

Water Festival.. Sure must blog about the SPLASHES right?! lol
All i can say is SplashTastic!! The splash is not only limited to buckets, pails or water guns but even the fire-engines also came and hoses us down. It’s like war out there; everybody is splashing at somebody and throwing talcum powder like its FOC. Hours of splashing water seems just like a moment only until the kids came and surrendered saying they can’t take it no more then only we realised it's already FOUR hours of splashes. When we head home, the revelers there are not done yet but i know we are^^.


"we're fully loaded!"


It's WAR out there!!


Me and my army ^^.




My.. my.. b's all wet..


Can't wait for next year...

3 comments:

xan said...

wao.... u wet jor la... but the pic is very small leh... next year bring me go la haha~

LilMeJo said...

sure sure =D

Anonymous said...

haha..... u go 2 Songkran ah.....din see u wan.... didnt ask me go 2gether....