Thingyan: A Celebration of the Burmese New Year :: Burma, Myanmar

Everywhere I went, there was water. People on the road were all soaked from head to toe. They seemed to like the fact that they are wet. But why would they want to get wet? Because it's Thingyan. Thingyan is a traditional Burmese celebration which is the water festival. It is a celebration of the Burmese New Year. People celebrate Thingyan in April, the hottest month of the year. The Burmese people threw water at each other to cool themselves down, and as Burmese people believe it, to clean away the bad deeds of the previous year. Many flowers bloom in this time of the year and Padauk is the most special among them. Padauk is a spray of small yellow flowers that bloom on little stems. Among the dark green leaves, this yellow flower looks very pretty. Padauk is the typical flower in Thingyan. In some villages, boys would pick those flowers for girls to wear. Most girls wear them even if boys wouldn’t pick flowers for them. In the olden days, people would splash water at each other with buckets of water. They would tease each other and eat special food like, Montloneyaybaw (means–round snack floating on water). Montloneyaybaw is a floating rice dough ball, which had been boiled. In the center, it has a piece of jaggery. It is served with coconut shreds. Just to have fun, the Burmese people who made this dough would put chili instead of jaggery. People would never get angry at each other for it is Burmese New Year and getting wet is a normal thing at Thingyan. Now a days, as the culture developed, people use water guns and water hoses to make others wet. Young people would dye their hair to make themselves look cool. They would go around the town in cars to get wet. People who use water hoses would be on stages, throwing water from a high place. There would also be bands playing or dancers dancing on the stages at the back. Even though the culture developed, the traditional practices are still the same. People still throw water to wash away the bad deeds they did in the previous year. But most of the young people threw water for fun. They think this is the time of year to gather all your friends and go around getting wet. But some young people still follows the real tradition of Thingyan.