Word: songkran
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...Like Britain, Thailand has embarked upon a rocky legislative road, hoping that new laws will fix an old problem. While Brits debated minimum pricing, Thais were arguing the merits of prohibiting alcohol sales during Songkran, or Thai New Year, which runs April 13-15 and is the country's most important annual holiday. This is a bit like Sir Liam banning booze at Christmas. Better known among tourists as the Water Festival, Songkran is famous for mass water-pistol fights and - with millions of Thais visiting their families - insanely busy highways. During last year's festival, 360 people died...
...Year. On Dec. 31, western New Year's Eve is celebrated with parties, concerts and fireworks. A few weeks later the country stages massive celebrations in honor of Chinese New Year. Finally, on April 13 Thailand celebrates the first day of the traditional Thai calendar with Songkran, a three-day festival marked by parades, feasts and a water-throwing free-for-all in which people roam the streets with squirt guns, bowls of water and garden hoses, drenching passersby--and themselves--in the process. The water represents purification, but it also brings the revelers welcome relief: April is the hottest...
...Thais will tell you that the annual Songkran festival (April 8 to 16) is all about thanksgiving and family reunions?and so it is. But the best part of it is the license to douse passersby with water. This practice is apparently a rite of purification, but given that temperatures in Bangkok at this time of year can easily reach 35?C, it's also a brilliantly timed excuse to cool off. If you happen to be in the Thai capital?or indeed in any one of dozens of towns and cities across the kingdom?don't think that your...
...Thais will tell you that the annual Songkran festival (April 8 to 16) is all about thanksgiving and family reunions - and so it is. But the best part of it is the license to douse passersby with water. This practice is apparently a rite of purification, but given that temperatures in Bangkok at this time of year can easily reach 35?C, it's also a brilliantly timed excuse to cool off. If you happen to be in the Thai Loh and Behold Avant-garde murals and imaginative furnishings characterise a new Singapore hotel Identity Parade An iconic style magazine...
...also, considering Bangkok's sexual notoriety, a surprisingly prudish place. Soap operas are so straitlaced that they cannot broach the topic of "minor wives," as mistresses are euphemistically known. Meanwhile, the Ministry of Culture (a Thaksin-era invention) pesters young women who wear skimpy clothes during the annual Songkran water-splashing festival, even though "traditional" Thai women wore even less. This public puritanism explains the enduring popularity of the demure "sniff kiss," which Cornwel-Smith terms "the Thai way to reach first base...