13 JAN 2017: It starts with a small drop of water on your shoulder for good luck, but stick around and it will turn into a tidal wave you can’t escape. There’s nothing anywhere quite like Water Festival in Myanmar. And for our tours from an Irrawaddy River cruise on AmaWaterways‘ ship AmaPura, it made for some of the most amazing experiences we’d ever had.
The water festival celebration marking Burmese New Year is the most important public holiday throughout Myanmar. It also marks the end of the school year, so not surprisingly it’s a time for kids to let off steam.
As we discovered, the steam builds to unbelievable excesses in the four-day splashathon. Fortunately, a little water feels good in the baking heat of Burmese springtime, when the daytime highs typically top 100 degrees Fahrenheit.
The crazy festivities started out innocently enough on our first day. We’d left the new 56-passenger AmaPura by bus to visit an orphanage near Mandalay and along the road little kids with water pistol in their hands were squirting passing pedestrians.
Cute.