The Wetter, The Better! Thingyan Water Festival | Yangon, Myanmar

Thingyan is a Theravada Buddhist water festival celebrated in Myanmar around mid-April right before their traditional new year. In modern times, it's a playful water war that is waged on both the city and village streets across the country which happened to last five days this year.

Many people ride around in the back of trucks to get doused by hose-weilding people on temporary roadside spraying stages called pandals. They are literally like human car washes. No where and no one is dry. Which is ok, because April is the hottest, driest month of the year here. This week the temp was over 100ºF/38ºC every day. (A similar festival called Songkran is celebrated in Laos and Thailand around the same time.) 

I met a couple guys in my hostel at breakfast and we later set off in search of festivities. It took all of three seconds after leaving the hostel to start getting doused; locals especially love to get foreigners wet so we were moving targets. You'll start getting splashed early around 8:00 or 9:00. Then there's kind of a break during the peak heat, maybe noon til 15:00 but the water wars resume. A dry truce is supposed to happen around 18:00. 

There was a stage and a huge crowd in front of the Town Hall near Sule Pagoda and it didn't take us long to get picked up by a truckload of locals. The truck was packed with people, water reserves and beer. We drove past a few splash stations and got soaked with firehoses. The force of the water knocked my hat off of my head and when I was finally able to look up, I saw that it had landed on the road and someone on a truck behind us had seen and retrieved it.

Well, I wasn't about to lose my favorite hat that has traveled the world with me since I bought it from a surf shop in Bali so I jumped off the back of our truck and ran to the truck behind us. (Best decision ever to wear my vibrams that day instead of flip flops.) I saw a dude on the truck wearing my hat and pointed to it emphatically because the music and crowds were so loud that he wouldn't be able to hear anything I said. He pointed at the hat then at me. I nodded and he took it off and tossed it down to me. Victoriously, I raced back to my own truck. No thing left behind! 

A few kilometers out of the city center, we promptly got a flat tire. No worries, though, we just joined a splashing station on the side of the road and doused trucks and busses as they drove by. Yep, even the public busses are fair game during Thingyan. 

The main event seemed to take place on the road near Inya Lake. There were at so many pandals set up with entertainment and/or water hoses that the streets were flooded. The guys and I followed Htet and Jesse - our gracious hosts for the day - through crowds of people dancing and moshing through a perpetual, manmade monsoon. Steve and I were armed with buckets and Walker ended up with a pretty sweet dolphin gun with accompanying backpack. 

In the city, people gather on the streets and in any public water source, including fountains and pools. There is no shortage of street food and I enjoyed my fair share of fried things, fruits, grilled corn, fresh-pressed sugar cane juice and - wait, stop everything - ice cream. 

After leaving the city, I'm glad I also got to experience some rural Thingyan celebrating after arriving at Thabarwa in Thanlyin. People, especially kids, are just as ready to soak you with water. Instead of trucks and stages, substitute motorbikes, village houses, small shops and buckets on the side of the road. 

I have to admit at first, I thought this was an incredible waste of natural resources, but eventually realized it all evaporates and will come back during the rainy season. Did I mention how refreshing it is to be soaked with water when its ridiculously hot outside? 

It's a new year, y'all

Not that you needed me to remind you. Everyone is well aware of the potential of the first new day of another new year. Come January first, gyms and malls and minds are filled with determination and excitement. And I'm no exception. I decided to finally conquer a lifetime of irrational fear with a single and rather mundane yet benevolent act. I got my hair cut. Sixteen inches of it to be exact, which was then donated to Pantene Beautiful Lengths which works directly with the National Cancer Society to create wigs for women battling the big C. 

But wait, why not Locks of Love? Although I love the alliterative name and their brand awareness is much higher, I was warned by a friend to research them first and subsequently read this article on Forbes that made me find a more transparent alternative.

Let me explain why this haircut is such a big deal for me. When I was about five, I fell asleep simultaneously chewing gum and watching cartoons. When I woke up, the gum had migrated from my mouth to my hair and made itself a sticky new home. I tried to pull it out and when that didn't work, I grabbed a pair of Minnie Mouse scissors and literally took matters into my own hands. (Every little girl ends up cutting her hair our of curiosity or catastrophe at some point or another, right?) 

I'm not sure whether my mom first discovered an abandoned chunk of blonde hair and bubblegum or me with my mangled mane first, but either way this event ended with a trip to a salon. I still remember the woman who was supposed to cut me a happy hair ending. Her name was Angie and she was chubby and had long, brown, crimpy, permed hair and super bangs in all of their late 80s/early 90s glory. I begged her to cut as little as possible as I watched her in the mirror, listening not to me but into a spirally-corded phone that was jammed in between her right ear and shoulder. 

Well I ended up with the worst haircut in the history of haircuts. It was some half-assed variation of a mullet with three perpetually awkward layers of hair. I didn't hate my hair, my hair hated me. I was emotionally scarred for life and hightailed it out of the salon in tears. I refused to get a haircut for the duration of elementary school.

As if the matching frilly umbrella, socks & fake scenery weren't bad enough... 

When I did finally decide it was time for a trim in middle school, mostly because peer pressure and puberty and not wanting people to think I was feral, I only sacrificed an inch or two. For the next several years, it was nothing but long, straight styles with the shortest layers never coming within field goal range of my shoulders. Once, in my early twenties, I experimented with bangs and even had some shoulder-length layers. But then quickly reverted to the same old coif. 

So I was emotionally and irrationally attached to my hair for the better part of three decades. I got the idea to cut and donate my hair during my recent travels to Asia. I was inspired by Buddhist monks who shave their heads which helps them detach from individual, physical appearance. And also I was kind of tired of dealing with it! By this time, my hair had grown obnoxiously long past the point of hippie and mermaid and was inching past my waist. 

I finally taught myself to French braid while I was in Sri Lanka and India so that helped me deal with my hair until I got home. I suppose I could have cut it during my travels but I wanted my hair to finish that whole journey too. My romanticized idea is that my globe-trotting tresses become part of a wig that encourages a woman battling cancer to travel somewhere she's always want to go, herself. 

And as for my new style, I love it! It's lighter and bouncier and makes me feel happier. Donating the hair-formerly-known-as-security-blanket turned out to be a literal weight off my shoulders. It's the most amazing feeling when you can help yourself and help others at the same time. Shout out to Pink the Beauty Boutique for cutting and donating my hair. 

Now that I'm home for a few weeks, I'm not sure what comes next, which is the exciting part! The only thing I know is that this is the first of many new experiences and adventures that await me between now and the next new year! 

The obligatory before and after. 

Would love to hear about what's new for you this year in the comments below. :)