Burmese Water Festival Thingyan

Where we stayed: Eden Hotel
Where we ate: The Moon

Thingyan or the Burmese Water Festival, takes place toward the end of the hot, dry season and to start off the Myanmar New Year.

The idea is to wash away all the previous year’s bad luck, and it’s also a great way to cool down, though I’ve come to discover it’s quite dangerous…. as you can see in the photographs, the festival involves throwing buckets (at the very least, sometimes multiple hoses) of water at drivers of all types of vehicles. Often there are children on the bikes and of course no helmets! No one seems to care! Only the monks and the elderly are “off limits.”

For the water festival we got stranded in Bagan because there were no buses going in or out of the city, and in fact, we were forced to book a flight a few days later to Inle Lake. I had a blast with Cam and Sarah, it was nice to have company on this portion of the trip.

Enjoy these photos of the Myanmar Water Festival! To those curious, I had my camera wrapped in a plastic bag while shooting, because people with nice cameras are definitely NOT off-limits!