MANDALAY water festival is considered the most wild in the country. This year residents have even more reason to celebrate – 2009 is the 150th anniversary of the city’s founding by King Mindon. Myanmar celebrities also seem to be getting in on the act. Most of the stars that we quizzed about their Thingyan plans said they would be heading to the former royal capital this year. Some said they would be taking it easy, spending time with their family or entering a meditation centre.

“DJs have been very popular elsewhere, ever since the late 70s when Kool Herc experimented with producing sound by scratching records. Now the technique has improved significantly and musicians can use the computer instead of a record player to make sounds.”

“I chose to buy a cheaper pair of sunglasses because I don’t want to spend much money on a pair just for the Thingyan water festival, which lasts only five days,”

She said the package – priced at $58 net per room per night for singles and $68 net per room per night for doubles – is available only to Myanmar nationals and foreign residents. Also included each day is a buffet breakfast at La Brasserie and a Dim Sum lunch at Phoenix Court or La Brasserie. Guests can also choose to have their lunch to take-away.

“The package includes roundtrip airfare, deluxe room accommodation, airport transfers, and daily breakfast, lunch and dinner, as well as free use of the hotel’s swimming pool,”

The festival marks the Buddhist New Year and the aim is to cleanse the difficulties and sins of the past 12 months. But to the uninitiated it appears a national effort to flood the streets, people, cars, animals – almost anything except monks, nuns and pregnant women – with copious amounts of water.

“If you take canned soft drinks out of the equation, sales volumes for bottled soft drinks usually double during water festival. The local, bottled soft drinks are popular among customers because of their freshness and reasonable price – they are about three times cheaper than the imported canned soft drinks,”

“We have to make sure the lunch boxes arrive at the pandal on time, the time when the pandal organiser says, usually about 11:30am. This can be challenging, in previous years I’ve done a minimum of 200 lunch boxes, maximum of 350 lunch boxes a day.”

“To build a pandal of about 100 feet, the cost will be about K10 million – that is just for the construction costs and without taking into consideration the entertainment costs. We have to use about 20 tonnes of timber for a pandal that size and the timber price is about K300,000 per tonne. A 100-foot pandal can hold about 200 people,”

“Since 2007, the numbers of pandals sponsored by businesses have been decreasing significantly for a number of reasons and some companies have chosen to simply set up their own pandals,”

Water is used to wash homes, Buddha images and monks, while friends and family are liberally soaked. Tradition dictates that students must first pour water respectfully on their elders, then monks for blessings and long life and finally all over each other. It is a common practice to scent the water with flowers or perfume.