Happy TLC New Year from the JoySauce team!

It's festival season in Southeast Asia—and we're not talking about Coachella. Thai, Lao, and Cambodian New Year is here, and with it comes days-long celebrations marking the change of seasons. In Thailand, the festival is referred to as Maha Songkran (meaning "grand passage"), while it's called Pi Mai Lao (meaning "Lao new year") in Laos and Choul Chnam Thmey (meaning "entering the new year") in Cambodia. With the Buddhist lunisolar calendar as the compass for the year, TLC New Year occurs in mid-April each year, marking the start of the solar year when the sun transits from Pisces to Aries.

Offerings of food, incense, and flowers are a big part of Thai, Lao and Cambodian New Year traditions.

Samantha Pak

Traditionally, the festival takes place over the course of three days. On day one, which is considered the last day of the old year, families clean their homes to prepare for the celebrations and arrange their upcoming offerings of food, incense, and flowers. In some areas, observers will build mounds of sand on riverbanks or temple grounds, decorating them with flags and garlands as a means of making merit and replenishing the sand that has been carried away over the last year. Day two of the festival, the day between the old year and the new, is a day of fun and rest, friends and family gathering alongside food, drink, and music. On the final day of the festival, which is also the first day of the new year, revelers visit temples where Buddha statues are sprinkled with fresh, scented water to resemble purification, and young people wash the hands of their elders to seek blessings. In Laos, this day is also often marked with a Baci ceremony, where white threads that are believed to hold the blessings of spirits and ancestors are tied around the wrists by monks and elders. 

In the region, this time of year also coincides with the end of the dry harvest season and the start of the rainy monsoon months, which means water is a significant piece of the celebrations for all three countries. Sprinkling water on friends and family helps to wash away any misfortunes and bad luck from the previous year, and cleanses their energy to make way for new blessings in the new year. Spiritual practices of the holiday come hand in hand with social ones, which popularly take water celebrations to the next level. People in small towns and big cities across Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia flood the streets with water guns and super soakers, and roads are closed and transformed into arenas for water fights. Whether you’re passing by on a motorcycle or tuk-tuk, or simply roaming the streets during the spectacle, consider yourself fair game for a splash of water. 

In the United States, Buddhist temples and Southeast Asian communities across the country come together to celebrate every April, keeping these traditions alive.

One tradition for Thai, Lao and Cambodian New Year is to build mounds of sand on temple grounds and decorate them with flags and garlands.

Samantha Pak

For me, I associate Songkran time with the smells of the temple, jasmine flower garlands decorating altars, and special scented water used during this time called Nam Ob Thai, which is used to sprinkle on Buddha statues and cool down our bodies in the equatorial heat. Made with water that’s infused with flowers like jasmine, orchids, champaca, as well as sandalwood and bergamot, the fragrances and sensory experiences associated with the holiday are closely tied to my memories of celebration and renewal.

Here are some of JoySauce’s Thai, Laotian, and Cambodian writers’ favorite parts of the festival season.

Nimarta Narang

Three years ago, I told my partner about Songkran and how special it was to celebrate with my extended family growing up—the water festival was a chance for us to get together and just play, and then enjoy massive amounts of Thai food afterward. It was as though we were renewing our bonds each time, as is in the spirit of the celebration. Every year since, my partner has taken it upon himself to splash ice-cold water at me as a surprise at the beginning of Songkran. A water fight will ensue where we try to sneak up on one another to throw water when the other is least expecting it over the three days. We have now included friends in this tradition. The ice-cold water warms my heart in knowing that such a celebration touches more people with each passing year, and my community in turn, inevitably grows.

Anjana Pawa

One of my earliest memories as a child is celebrating Songkran with my family when we lived in Bangkok. We’d fill up water balloons into a bucket, make sure all the water guns were fully loaded and ready to play, and run around the courtyard splashing water at each other before indulging in a large, homecooked meal. Today, as an adult in New York City, celebrations look a bit different. These days, I gather with my chosen family, introduce them to new foods and traditions, and take a trip to Little Thailand in Elmhurst, Queens to grab my favorite sweets.

Sanaphay Rattanavong

Some of my clearest childhood memories are from Lao New Year—Pi Mai Lao—festivals at the Lao Buddhist temple in the exurbs of Minneapolis. I owe the strength and persistence of these memories to their tactility: the soft and comforting white threads from the Baci ceremony around my wrists that my little brother would always somehow “win” by amassing a lamb’s worth of white yarn around his lower arms; the floral coolness of the water blessing ceremony on my face and neck (often, the festivals would be held closer to summertime, as Minnesota winters could drag on, and so it was usually hot during the day); and the taste of Lao food that, despite its familiarity, sat differently on my tongue because it wasn’t made by my mom or aunt or grandma, but by another Lao matron altogether.

Samantha Pak

Samantha Pak at a Cambodian New Year celebration in Stockton, California.

Courtesy of Samantha Pak

My favorite part of Cambodian New Year is just seeing our community come together to celebrate. Whether it’s at wat (temple), a community center, or a local Cambodian restaurant, I always love gathering with my fellow Khmer folks. Even if we don’t know each other personally, there’s just something about being together for this specific occasion that blurs the lines between strangers and friends. I also love how it’s a time for us to really lean into our culture—from enjoying our favorite Khmer dishes, to watching traditional dance performances, to playing the traditional dice betting game klah klok, (yes, gambling, and yes, sometimes this happens at temple—although I only ever watch)—that makes me extra proud to be Khmer.