I finally have photos to aid me in my attempt to describe the undescribeable - the insane Thingyan holiday, aka “the water festival” in Myanmar.
First a little background:
Thingyan is the name of the Burmese new year holiday.
It’s celebrated over the course of 5 days in April according to the Buddhist calendar.
It’s the most important public holiday in Myanmar.
It coincides with the both the peak of the dry/hot season and the beginning of kiddies summer vacation from school.
In the past, it was a traditional part of the festival to sprinkle water into a silver bowl, to metaphorically “wash away ones sins” before the beginning of the new year. This has morphed into an all out water fight involving buckets, hoses, and water guns that persists through all 5 days, hence the modern name “Water festival”.
For more info, check out the Thingyan wikipedia entry.
Now some more specifics about the “water” part. Here are a few typical street scenes during the festival. This is what it looked like everywhere in Yangon and Mandalay over the five days of the festival:

Everywhere, and i mean EVERYWHERE, there are people in the street with the buckets and hoses just waiting for someone to walk or drive by. From my observations, no one is exempt except for monks. Women, young children, the elderly, a car with a window rolled down, everyone gets a bucket of water poured on them if they are out in public. Foreigners are especially popular to douse. It appeared to me that anyone who spots a foreigner coming informs everyone else nearby so they can have their water spraying implement ready and/or begin an active pursuit of the targets. There are no exceptions, for example, if you’re holding a camera, which made it challenging to get photos of the action!
Clustered around town are sponsored “hose stations”; a stage facing the street with a dozens of hoses for partakers to use:
Lots of folks, especially teenagers and young adults, pile into trucks and jeeps and drive slowly around town getting repeatedly soaked with water and throwing their own buckets at random people they pass . In the areas with high concentrations of hose stations there are also crowds of people dancing in the street amidst the spraying water.

I don't know !

I was working on my final project as usual; meeting Burmese new comers, asking about their experiences in life and so on. All the stories that they told me are similiar to this ( below ) story. I got this from one of my friends. I hope, this story will give you a " thought " on your mind. i don't know what kind of thoughts it will give you. But i am sure after reading this, something will come across on your mind.


Bangkok is a notorious destination for sex tourism.But the lives of many of the city's sex workers are full of danger, disease and the urgent need to send money home.Pim, who recently left her job in a go-go bar, has a typical story.
"I grew up in the countryside. My parents were farmers and I helped them in the fields. We were poor but we always had enough to get by.When I was about 15, my family fell apart. My father always drank a lot, but it became worse and worse, and he started becoming violent. So my mother, sister and I moved out.I wanted to study to become a nurse, but when my parents split up I had to leave school and find work as a day labourer, harvesting crops for local farmers. I didn't like it much, and it only paid 100 baht ($3) a day.At about that time a good friend moved to Bangkok, and when she came back to visit she told me she was earning a lot of money there as a waitress.
There was gossip in the village that she was doing something other than waitressing, as she was sending 10,000 baht ($300) home a month, but she always denied it.She asked me to come with her, but at the time I was still 16 and too scared. A few years later, though - when I had given birth to my daughter, and my husband and I had separated - I changed my mind.I left the baby with my mother, and told her I needed to earn some money in Bangkok. But I didn't tell her what I was doing - I still haven't. She'd be so ashamed.
'Can I do this?'When my friend took me to a bar in Nana Plaza for the first time, I was really shocked. I'd never been to a place like that before, and at the beginning I didn't even know what the dancers were doing.When I finally realized, I couldn't take it and I walked out of the bar. I kept thinking 'Can I really do this?'Initially I decided to work there just serving drinks, but the dancers earned a lot more money, and eventually I agreed to do that too.For the first month, the bar owners allow girls to get their full salary even if they just work as dancers. But after that you have to meet a quota of at least 10 customers a month, or your wages will be cut.
My first customer was a Western man in his 30s. It was scary and I really didn't like it, but I just kept thinking about the money.I couldn't wait for him to leave, and when he did I had a shower for a very long time. I started crying, and thought about what my parents would think if they knew what I was doing.None of my customers ever asked me about my life; they didn't care. There was one time a guy asked me if I was okay, but I didn't know what to say, so I just looked away.While I was working in the bars, I was often worried about disease, and also about safety. Some girls earned extra by going out of the bars with the men, but I always used a room upstairs as I was too scared of the risks involved.My friend once went with a guy to his hotel room, and found lots of other men there too. She wouldn't tell me what happened after that, but she was shaking for a long time when she got back home.I also had some scary experiences myself. One time a Japanese man followed me all the way home at the end of the night, and he kept screaming at me.Taxi drivers can also be threatening to bar girls, and we would only dare go home in groups.
Looking forwardDespite these problems, new girls often arrive. Many customers prefer children or young girls, and the bar owners always encouraged us to recruit teenagers from our home villages.Even though I got used to it in some ways, I always hated working in the bars. I made some good friends but there was nothing good about the life I was leading.
I felt good about sending money home, but I didn't feel good about myself. Soon I was getting penalized as I wasn't getting enough customers.
That's when a friend of mine told me about Nightlight [a Christian charity offering training and employment for former sex workers, through a jewellery-making business].Since I've started working there, my life is so much better. I don't earn as much as I did in the bars, but it's worth it, and people here listen to me and care for me.I've now got the opportunity to look forward in life. I want to finish school, and study accounting, so I'll be able to pay for my daughter to have a good life.I wish I had never become a sex worker. I think some foreign men think it's okay to pay for sex here in Thailand, as they think the girls actually want to do this.But these men don't understand that most of us have no choice - we're just trying to earn money for our families, and waiting for a chance to leave."