Why Water Festival is the Absolute Craziest Time to Visit Myanmar
If you read our Myanmar travel guide and our list of 10 things to know about Myanmar, you’ve already gotten a heads up about Thingyan (aka New Year’s...aka Water Festival). If you haven’t, you’re in for a treat because Water Festival played a big role in defining our out-of-this-world Myanmar adventure.
Water Festivals are a common way to celebrate the new year throughout Southeast Asian countries including Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, and Myanmar. Traditionally, a light sprinkle of water from one person to another signified blessings, well wishes, and cleansing as they rung in the new year.
Since New Year’s occurs during the hottest month in SE Asia, over the years that respectful sprinkle quickly turned into an utter dousing, all-out water fight, and raucous celebration throughout the streets.
We had a fairly open travel itinerary, and were faced with the decision of whether to avoid the countries that celebrate Water Festival or to throw ourselves right into the mix. There are definitely pros and cons to visiting a country during a major national celebration.
Cons:
Crowds (if you happen to be where the party’s at), or lack of crowds (if it’s a festival where everyone travels back to their hometown and you’re in the major city).
Tourist attractions may be closed
Sometimes there are transportation shut-downs and you may experience difficulty getting from place to place
Local stores and restaurants may be closed since everyone is off work to celebrate
Loud, wild, drunken street parties
Pros:
Experiencing the way locals celebrate a national observance
Joining in the fun right alongside them
Having a totally unique travel experience most visitors won’t get
Loud, wild, drunken street parties
Thailand’s Water Festival (called Songkran) is notorious for its craziness, but we didn’t know much about Myanmar’s festival and decided to travel there during Thingyan. We had NO IDEA what we were in for.
Thingyan is a 4-day festival in Myanmar that typically begins around April 13th.
We began experiencing the initial rumblings of Thingyan on our second and last day in Yangon, and wondered if we had made the wrong decision traveling to Myanmar during a national holiday. Several local establishments we wanted to visit were already closed due to the festival.
As we walked through a nearly empty Bogyoke Aung San Market, where most of the stalls were shut down, we saw an early water fight / dance party starting outside and local kids began squirting us with water guns. At the time, we were a little annoyed because we had no weapons to fight back. What we didn’t know then was that these small squirts were literally the tip of the iceberg for what we’d experience over the next few days.
The next day it was off to Bagan, the ancient city that had been our inspiration to visit Myanmar in the first place. It was the first real day of Thingyan, and from the second we arrived we were thrust into a nonstop water fight that lasted the full three days we were there.
Separately from the Water Festival, Bagan was one of the most magical and adventurous travel experiences we’ve ever had. You can read more about it in our full Myanmar itinerary. Our crazy time there was only heightened by Thingyan.
The moment we arrived at our hostel, Ostello Bello Bagan, we were greeted by a raging water fight out front. Several water stations were set up around the roundabout in front of the hostel, where kids (and some adults) hung out all day dancing to music and dousing all passersby — whether in trucks, on foot, or on motorbikes — with hoses and buckets of water.
We were pretty intimidated at first and tried to avoid getting drenched. After unpacking our things in our room, we settled into the hostel’s outdoor patio for some drinks. Kids knew they weren’t supposed to breach the hostel perimeter, but they kept coming close, teasing that they were going to toss buckets of water on us.
Finally we realized there was no escaping the inevitable. We wanted to rent a motorbike to go explore the ancient city, but first we’d have to step outside the hostel. If we weren’t soaking wet, we had an automatic target on our backs.
And so our Thingyan initiation began. We stepped out into the street, held our arms up in a universal sign of surrender, and let the wild horde of kiddos drench us until there wasn’t a dry spot left on our bodies.
On motorbike, we realized that the water stations weren’t unique to our hostel location. They were lined up along all of the major roadways throughout Bagan. Every time we passed one, we’d get aggressively smacked with a face full of water, which makes it a bit difficult not to crash your motorbike while also avoiding ingesting potentially bacteria-laden H20.
Soon we learned that the best move was just to slow down, or sometimes come to a complete stop to let the kids drench us. Sometimes they’d even stand in the middle of the road forcing us to do so, but after they were sufficiently satisfied that they’d done their job, they’d always part the seas and let us continue on our merry way.
Oh yeah, it also happened to be 100+ degrees, so at some point we came to welcome the water stations and thanked our lucky stars that we visited during Thingyan. We just had to accept that we’d look like wet dogs in all of our photos.
The other crazy part about being in Bagan for Water Festival was that it draws lots of local tourists. Burmese people who have the week off from work and school often choose to visit the ancient city for the first time during Thingyan, which means that we encountered locals who had never seen foreign tourists before.
While it’s low season for international tourists in Myanmar because it’s the hottest time of year, we saw plenty of locals at the bigger ancient temples, prompting many a photo request in which each we were asked (or rather, just directed via physical force) to take individual photos with each member of an entire family. Check us out on Burmese Instagram...we’re kind of a big deal.
Sam almost had to tell this woman to back up off her man.
The water fights did not let up for three whole days. During the day, everyone enjoyed playful water fights at the roadside water stations, or rode around in open-back trucks squirting pedestrians with water guns. At night, stages were set up with song and dance performances and lots and lots of drinking.
We boarded a small shuttle bus to leave Bagan on the fourth day of Thingyan, and only encountered more Water Fest madness en route to Inle Lake. What’s already a full day 8-hour drive became an 11 HOUR DRIVE due to Thingyan. We were stopped along the roadway countless times by kids at water stations asking for money, which we were surprised that the driver doled out without asking any of us passengers to contribute.
Then, we got stuck in a HUGE water party — like we’re talking the Coachella of Myanmar here — for over an hour. Everyone in the crowd around us was soaking wet, piss drunk, and having a grand ol’ time. We had to roll our windows down and beg the crowd to let us through, which only earned us a couple inches at a time.
By the time we reached Inle Lake it was dark, and by the next morning Thingyan had officially come to an end. While the festival was maddening at times, we feel overwhelmingly lucky to have experienced it, and especially to have been in Bagan where we got to enjoy the astounding historic sites and the local celebration side by side. The festival didn’t negatively effect our ability to see what we wanted to see at all, whereas it definitely can in the bigger cities.
Have you ever visited somewhere during a local holiday or celebration? Tell us about it in the comments, or on our latest IG post!
Happy travels!
