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From the ball drop in America, to the first shrine visit in Japan, each culture rings in the New Year in their own special way. Thailand’s Songkran, or commonly known as the water throwing festival, may be the most carefree and fun tradition though. RocketNews24 has brought you the story from last year’s festival, but we couldn’t resist sending a crew back this year. Click on through to see if they were able to avoid getting wet this year, and the plight of their electronic equipment!

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Celebrated on April 13th-15th, the Thai New Year is celebrated in earnest each year by pouring water on each other. Traditionally, Buddhist statues are washed during this holiday as it is believed that this will bring happiness and good fortune in the coming year.  That water is then poured on friends and family, extending that good fortune to them. In recent times though, this “spreading” of happiness is not limited to just your friends and family, almost anyone in the area is fair game, and who wouldn’t welcome happiness???

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Eager participants gather in the streets, water at the ready, as if they are saying “we’ve been waiting for this!” April, being the hottest month of the year in Thailand, is a fantastic time of year to hold a water festival. There is absolutely no way for you to escape getting wet. Walking around will get you soaked, sitting and eating will get you soaked, running, biking, riding a bus, no matter what you do, you are going to get soaked.

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If you go anywhere during the festival, water attacks will come from every direction. Don’t expect yourself to make the trip without getting wet, so it’s not even worth trying! If you remember last year, our writer participated wearing a suit to hilarious/disastrous results!

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Our staff was going towards Khao San Road, and we idiotically brought a 4K camera (a really expensive camera) with us. We had a nice Digital SLR camera as well, what were they thinking? We all saw the pictures from last year. I don’t even have to tell you what happened; let’s just let the pictures speak for themselves.

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The RocketNews24 Digital SLR stopped working, and we couldn’t risk the other expensive camera, but we had to take pictures somehow. With no other choice, we whipped out our iPhones to take pictures. Pretty soon they stopped working as well. With no other means to document the event, we decided we might as well take part too! We should have packed underwater gear!

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Some festivals can be observed from the sidelines, but there is no way to avoid being a part of this one. Water guns, cups of water, buckets of water, water bazookas, foam machines, water hoses, any method of launching water onto another will be used during this festival. You will never be safe from the water, but isn’t that the point!? If you fancy yourself a trip to Thailand next year for this festival, don’t take it lightly, expect to become totally drenched, and share in that happiness!

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And be sure to check out this video! It’s also fantastic!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2pd22uE5d98

Images and Video: RocketNews24
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