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.