“SONGKRAN” Yesterday – Today – Tomorrow

“Songkran” is Thai ancient tradition to celebrate the Thai New Year for long time. There is the day of generosity, love and fondness giving to family, community, society and religion. Today is the family day; all householders and some relatives gather together to be grateful to their grandparents, great grandparents and also their forebear. Descendants bring gifts and pour water on the hands of revered elders and ask for blessing. They go to make merit at the temple. There are many activities to harmonize people in community such as offering food to monks, make sand pagodas, and water splashing for enjoyment. Moreover, there are some activities to make unity, share-possessiveness feeling of public properties and environment; people clean up their houses, temples and other public buildings.

Water splashing is a symbol of Songkran festival because it is a distinctive and well-known activity. Since this festival has been held in summer, it makes this activity is so favourable.

At the beginning, people walked and could play with their intimate friends or they could splash only people who willing to play with them. They splashed in limited areas not all over the whole city.

However, something has been changed. The beginning of the change was around 1960. There were many tourists from Bangkok arrived here to see the Lanna tradition which they had never seen before. This make the festival become as the famous tourist selling point. But the wave of tourist gradually makes change to the festival. Make it worse. From the fabulous tradition to something that are not exactly Songkran anymore. Lots of vehicles – trucks and motorbikes, crowd into the city mote. People can splash to anybody that they want. Female teenagers dress with strapless, spaghetti sleeve, and mini-shorts. All this behavior can decay the beautiful Sognkran.

What does next generation Songkran mean and look like?

Dutdaow [Jazz]

Pollution crisis

Pollution crisis
A big sign for the end of the world.

When we talk about summer, everyone would think about clear sky, sunny day and deep blue sea. For Thai people, summer is not only the time that we can get tanned but it is also the time to get wet with Songkarn festival. Chiang Mai is number one destination for people to join Songkarn festival and splash the water at each other.

Can you still remember your last Songkarn in Chiang Mai? If you can you must realized what number one issue was at that moment. At that moment every front page of local Chiang Mai newspaper covered the story of pollution crisis in Chiang Mai. The Pollution Control Department has detected the level of fine particle pollutants as high as 200 micrograms per cubic meter, which is above the standard level of 120 micrograms per cubic meter. To say it verbally may not be as clear as see it visually. During that time everyone in Chiang Mai live their lives in the dust, the dust that floated in the air. No one could ever see the sun during that period. This accident caused by the trash burn and forest fires. Then everyone began to aware of the problem and stop burning everything that might cause the pollution get worse again.

After what happened, everyone got the lesson and stop burning everything but that lesson is still not enough to stop them completely. Some people start outdoor burning activities again and the air pollution in Chiang Mai reached the critical level again. What do they think about? Maybe they only concern about themselves not others. Do lung cancer and other respiratory illnesses are not enough to make them stop? Maybe this really is the end of human civilization. What does actually destroy our planet is not the asteroid from other galaxy. It’s more like human causing all these.

What is your opinion toward this issue? How can we make people aware with this problem ?

Posted by Chaiyot (Gong)

++Stray dog cannot eliminate from Chiang Mai++

There are a lot of stray dogs in Chiang Mai, more than 10,000 stray dogs around the city. What happened with poor dogs? Why they throw their own dog away like the garbage that they don’t want to keep it. Dogs have their feeling, the feeling of fear, lonely, gloomy. If you are put in this situation how you do feel?

I always depressed when I see poor dogs, it lives without home, food and love from people who should be called the owner. They vagrant, move a lot from place to place, without hope in their life. They have to find some food from a mountain of garbage, but it is a little filling into their stomach. At night with the feeling of coldness, they have to lie down on the ground without warming. I cannot explain this feeling into word when I look into gloomy eyes. If I am abandoned, I cannot imagine how do I feel? I feel sorry with them because these dogs have the suffering from people who leave them alone.

People have wrong value. They feel that a puppy is so cute, so they buy them for their pleasantness. And the little puppy grow up, they eat more than they were young. They are not cute anymore. The consequence is deserting. When dogs are deserted, their population is growing up. There is no breed control in stray dogs; many little dogs become street dogs.

The problem causes by strays dog is rabies, a fetal disease which can be transmitted to humans. Stray dogs live without good looking after, so they are no chance to vaccinate the disease preventing.

Local Government should pay more attention to this problem. They should have stray dogs control planning. For instance, controlling a dog population by sterilization, to makes it impossible for them to have or produce babies. The number of stray dogs should be stable, not increase extremely.

Another suggestion is arresting stray dogs to live together in animal shelter. It will be better instead of wandering place to place. But they have to take care of them seriously. Another problem of animal shelter is money. Money is so important for feeding a lot of stray dogs. Is there anybody who has determining to solve strays dog problem? I think nobody because it wastes their time and money. So you still see dogs wander around Chiang Mai and the government cannot eliminate them. I hope someday these dogs will have a home and won't be abandoned at all.

by Nartchulee Thaithiang (Eve)