Happy Thingyan Festival to my Burmese Friends

Starting from today, Myanmar is having a new year holiday for 10 days out of which 5 are official Thingyan Festival period. Thingyan means "Transform" or "Change". Simply, it means New Year. We also call Thingyan as Water Festival or Thingyan Water Festival 'cos for 4/5 days we will be splashing water on one another to rinse our sins from the previous year. 

This is how we celebrate new year's eve for 4 days (5 days in Burmese leap years)

Thingyan Documentary - by a foreigner

A Remix Version of Thingyan Moe (New Year Shower) by my favorite actress/singer Htun Eindra Bo. It's like informal national anthem like Mei Hua for Taiwan. We like to sing this song for most of the ceremonies especially held overseas.

Actually the above song was 22 years old. Here is the original singer who became famous due to the movie Thingyan Moe where he sang that theme song in 1985. He is also known as Thingyan Prince. The dancer is a veteran actress with 3 or 4 Academy awards. She also became famous with her debut film Thingyan Moe. (Of cos she was slim and pretty in the film unlike now haha...) They are the idols in my parents' era. To a lot of Burmese people Thingyan = Zaw Wan (this singer) = Thingyan Moe = Padauk (the national flower which blooms once a year only in April after the rain in mid-summer which we call Thingyan shower). 

Commercialized Thingyan (Famous rappers commercializing every Thingyan with new albums) 

Burmese all over the world won't forget to celebrate Thingyan wherever they are. 

2007 Myanmar Thingyan Festival in LA

2006 Myanmar Thingyan Festival in NYC

2007 Myanmar Thingyan Festival in Singapore @ Peninsula

The world associate Water Festival with Thai 'cos it also has the same new year festival as Myanmar, which is called Songkran. Laos and Cambodia also share the same tradition as us. I'd say Myanmar Thingyan is the biggest among all 'cos these countries use water gun and bowls whereas we are using not only normal pipes, but those used by firefighters, with pressure pump, etc., (not to mentioned the-already-banned water balloon).  

I was quite amused that tourists only know Thai Songkran and they already call it wild. I'd say Thingyan is like an orgy 'cos only 3 years old kids use water-gun in Myanmar, and 5 years old kids will use buckets. We don't actually splash water on other, but we will make others drowned in the sea of waters coming from the hundreds of pipes from one pandal (big stage with singing, dancing and pipes for people who wanna splash water to those on the open-air vehicles who wander around the city to see such pandals cos the celebrities will be around. 

The so-called "World's Largest & Wildest Water Fight" in Thailand.