FOTO-FOTO: Songkran at Golden Mile Complex

Ritualistic fun, Thai-style.

6 Jun 2012
Near the second floor entrance of Golden Mile Complex, shoppers pour holy water (nam nom) over an image of Buddha for prosperity in this existence and an extinguishing of the craving for the next.
During Songkran, telcos give away freebies like bottles of water, talcum powder, and sour faces with the sale of their calling cards.

Translated from Sanskrit, ‘Songkran’ means “to move into”. In Thailand, this festival in April marks the traditional New Year when the Sun moves into the sign of Aries, signalling another life cycle. An import from Brahmanism, Songkran is also celebrated in Laos, Burma, Southern China, and Golden Mile Complex.

The idea that you can cleanse yourself of sins is fascinating to me. When I was a travel photographer, I used to go to Thailand until somebody mentioned that Thai festivals were celebrated here too. In 2008, I made my first trip to Golden Mile for Songkran.

Grown men were dancing in the flooded lobby. Battles were going on with Super Soakers, talcum powder, and pails of icy water. The makeshift stage was on a balcony without barriers. The Singaporean in me thought, “What happens if someone falls over and dies?”

Four years later, I find most of the crowd confined to the third floor. The people I speak to are mostly Singaporeans or Malaysians who had been informed of the event by beer promoters. Other than some kids, a group of expats are there because their friend's Thai wife had told them about it. “Where’s the party?” I ask the shop owners. “No budget lah,” they say.

It's a joy to me that within this mixed-use development is a space for foreign fun, still. Not the sort of celebration that requires streets to be shut down – neither a festivity that is free of commerciality. Taking place indoors for a largely invisible community, Songkran in Singapore is small, spontaneous, and as spicy as chilli padi not watered down for the Singaporean's taste buds.

Images & Words Deanna Ng

The carnivalesque environment takes in both adults and children. In Thailand, they play a game together with a twisted cloth, chanting: “I am hiding a piece of cloth. The cloth is behind my back. Leave it here? Leave it there? I will tap you on the back.”
A group of Tiger Beer promoters turned revelers. In 2009, violence broke out during Bangkok’s Songkran, while a 2011 Bangkok Post editorial noted, rather dourly, “Songkran festival has descended into just a long annual break marked by water attacks, heavy drinking, road accidents and untimely deaths. What a way for a country to start a new year!”
Golden Mile gets flooded from all the water. Shop owners take cover by shielding their goods with plastic sheets and lining newspapers in front of their stores.
In 2008, Golden Mile's first floor was transformed into a disco while the upper floors became viewing galleries.
Customers, in a restaurant, breaking out into an impromptu song and dance.
In tourist literature, Songkran is known as the “Water Throwing Festival” and a prime example of the sanuk (fun) nature of Thai life. But to Southeast Asian researcher Hjorleifur Jonsson, “sanuk appears primarily as a component of situations of inequality". Sanuk can be seen as a “class-based standard for how far people are willing to go to serve someone else’s purpose”.
Besides Golden Mile, whose target group is the Friends of Thai Labours’ Association, Songkran is also celebrated here in universities, bars, basketball courts, and temples, where the Miss Songkran competition is held.
*Advertise with us
Published by:

© 2011 Studio Wong Huzir

Terms Of Use