Southeast Asians celebrate traditional new year

Southeast Asians celebrate traditional new year

BANGKOK (Reuter): People throughout mainland southeast Asia began the traditional new year yesterday with visits to their temples but tragedy clouded festivities in a northeastern Thai city where six people died in a traffic crash.

The new year is celebrated with only minor variations in Thailand, Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos and some parts of southern China, and across the region people began the day by offering alms to Buddhist monks performing merit-making ceremonies at temples.

The usually traffic-clogged streets of the Thai capital were virtually empty after hundreds of thousands of residents headed to their upcountry homes to visit families or left the city for a long-weekend break.

As well as performing sacred rituals at temples, people mark the new year by soaking each other with water in a profane manifestation of the ancient rite of purification.

Six people were killed and nine injured in the Thai city of Nakon Ratchasima when the pick-up truck they were traveling in to throw water at passers-by crashed head on with a heavy lorry late on Friday, police and hospital officials in the city said.

In the Myanmarese capital Yangon many people flocked to temples while others were out on the streets, throwing water and watching singers and dancers performing on makeshift stages set up around the city, residents there said.

Temples in the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh were also well attended, residents said, but security forces were on alert in Cambodia's second city of Battambang in case of an attempt by anti-government rebels to take advantage of the holiday to launch an attack.

Battambang, in the northwest of the country, near the scene of recent fighting between government forces and Khmer Rouge guerrillas has recently been the target of occasional bomb or rocket attacks.

Several hundred extra soldiers were being deployed in the city to ensure security during the holiday, a city official said this week.