Celebrating Songkran in Chiang Mai

There is a lot of information online when one asked Google about Songkran yet there is nothing like experiencing it first hand. 

This was my second time celebrating Songkran in Thailand but the first time in Chiang Mai. The last time it was in Bangkok which felt more like a big street water fight festival.

Chiang Mai had more traditional sense to the Songkran Festival mixed with the new water fight trend. Old city was surrounded with a moat of water making the parade or a drive/ride around the old city a full scale splashing event where getting wet was not a choice but a mandatory rite of passage.

Old City Chiang Mai surrounded by Moat 

Songkran in Chaing Mai

It was hot as hell as well in Apr 2024 and the north was filled with burning season from Myanmar, Laos and Thailand making the air filled with smog that went beyond unbearable. 

So a water festival felt nice and here the city was compact enough that the water fight could be walk from one end to another alternating between dry shopping trinket streets to party bars dunking every tourist that walk by.

Temporary Cease Fire for Dinner during Songkran in Chaing Mai

Chaing Mai Tourist Night Bazaar 

I checked into the hostel and stayed anchored just outside the hostel with the crew and their water point. Set inside the old town and not really at the main party street, we still gave no quarter to anyone that dared walked pass the junction. 

I joined the locals splashing everyone with buckets of water and tourist would pause watching us and taking photograph like I was a local.

Joining the Hostel Locals at their water point station

There was a sort of unspoken order as well in Chaing Mai during Songkran. During the day in the morning it was all about the traditional Songkran where possession of Buddha taken out from the temple would parade around the old town. 

One could splash water onto the Buddha statue symbolizing bathing the Buddha and all was civilized. In the evening or rather after lunch, everyone slowly sets up their water stations and by 4pm, the water fights would get so intense that the whole city was drenched. 

Traditional Songkran Festival Parade in Chaing Mai 

Traditional Songkran Parade in Chiang Mai

Songkran Parade in Chiang Mai

Then there was the slow period for dinner and the party continued at night all the way to midnight.

On the third Day of Songkran which supposedly the water festival would die down, I took a risk and make for a day-ride to do Doi Suthep loop. 

Wat Phra That Doi Suthep - Chiang Mai

I was obviously wrong and while riding the countryside roads, the festival was alive as the local indigenous tribes set up watering points along the road to stop cars and bikes before pouring buckets upon buckets of water like a toll fee to pass the road.

It was one of the most authentic part of Songkran that I experience doing the loop as there was no tourist in play and everything was part of the local community. 

Long Neck Tribe girls would be lining up to splash passerby followed by the Hmong and many other tribes. Usually motorbikes are exempt from the splashes base on unwritten and curtesy rule due to the danger of bike skidding out.

The locals however knew how to perfectly splash a bike without hurting them which I experience first hand. A road block. I was forced to slow down all the way to a stop where I was greeted by the unofficial traffic guide and then ten buckets of water would unload on me and Bragge while we were stationary. 

Blessing and cleansing completed, the traffic guide then open the road block wishing me a Happy Songkran for me to go on my merry way.

Few hundred meters later another I would encounter another road block and repeat the cycle.

Traveled on: Apr 2024