Water guns douse heat wave worries
Colourful celebration to mark New Year festivities draws thousands
It’s water festival time in Thailand where many are marking the country’s traditional New Year, splashing each other with colourful water guns and buckets in an often raucous celebration that draws thousands of people, even as this year the Southeast Asian nation marks record-high temperatures causing concern.
The festival, known as Songkran in Thailand, is a three-day shindig that started Saturday and informally extends for a whole week, allowing people to travel for family celebrations. The holiday is also celebrated under different names in neighbouring Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos, which like Thailand have populations that are predominantly Theravada Buddhist.
Songkran is immensely popular — predicted this year to attract more than 500,000 foreign tourists and generate more than 24 billion baht (more than $900 million Canadian) in revenue, according to the state tourism agency. Past Thai governments have been reluctant to call for dialling down the fun even during crises such as droughts and the pandemic
Though 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, Songkran these days is often associated with public drunkenness, sexual assault in the guise of merrymaking, and a spike in traffic fatalities, noticeable to the point that the holiday has been dubbed the “seven dangerous days.”
The festival usually falls at the hottest time of the year when temperatures can creep above 40 C.
But this year, the unusual heat wave, with expected record temperatures for the next few months, has triggered apprehension. The United Nations Children’s Fund warned Thursday the sweltering weather could put millions of children’s lives at risk, asking caregivers to take extra precautions.
The UNICEF statement said in the Asia-Pacific region, “around 243 million children are exposed to hotter and longer heatwaves, putting them at risk of a multitude of heat-related illnesses, and even death.”
Last week, the Philippines suspended classes in more than 5,800 public schools and shifted to homebased and online learning to protect millions of students from the scorching heat.