Water Guns at Full Blast for Thai New Year Festivities
It's water festival time in Thailand where many are marking the country's traditional New Year, splashing each other with colorful water guns and buckets in a celebration that draws thousands of people, even as this year the Southeast Asian nation marks record-high temperatures.
The three-day festival, known as Songkran in Thailand, started on April 13 and extends for a whole week, allowing people to travel for family celebrations. The holiday is also celebrated under different names in neighboring Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos.
Songkran is immensely popular — predicted this year to attract more than 500,000 foreign tourists and generate more than $655 million in revenue, according to the state tourism agency.
The festival originated as a way to pray for a rainy season that helped crops and included activities such as cleansing images of the Buddha and washing the hands and feet of elders. But these days, Songkran is often associated with public drunkenness and an increase in traffic fatalities, so that the extended holiday has been called the "seven dangerous days."
The festival usually falls at the hottest time of the year when temperatures can rise above 40 degrees Celsius.
But this year, the unusual heat wave, with expected record temperatures for the next few months, has triggered concern. The United Nations Children's Fund has warned the hot weather could put millions of children's lives at risk, asking people to take extra care.
The UNICEF statement said in the Asia-Pacific region, "around 243 million children are exposed to hotter and longer heat waves, putting them at risk of a multitude of heat-related illnesses, and even death."
Heat waves can be lethal as they affect the ability to breathe, making the old and young particularly vulnerable.
Vietnam, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand and Cambodia, all saw extreme heat between April 3-9, with parts of Laos and Thailand seeing temperatures that were 5-7 degrees Celsius more than the average, according to the Mekong Dam Monitor program of the Stimson Center in Washington D.C.
