This is an All Ears English podcast episode 1997.
How Songkran inspires waterfights and connection in English.
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What is the biggest water fight you have ever been to?
Today, Lindsay shares her experience at Songkran in Chiang Mai and you learn how to start a conversation with topics like childhood memories about water fights in English.
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Hello, Aubrey.
How's it going today?
I'm great.
How are you, Lindsay?
I'm glad to be here.
And I'm excited to talk about water fights today.
This is going to be so fun.
What is the biggest water fight you've ever been in?
Hands down, it's the song kron festival, and i think it was in chiang mai.
I did, i attended it in chiang mai thailand, in 2007 six 2006, seven oh my gosh, that is so awesome.
Yeah, i can't wait for this.
We're talking about song kron today.
I've never been, but it looks so fun, it looks amazing And this was fantastic that for three years they weren't able to have that festival due to the pandemic.
But just this year, as of April 13th, they were able to celebrate it again.
I saw pictures and video.
It looked so fun.
So I'm excited for you to tell us all about this festival and to talk about water fights, because in American culture this is big.
We have a lot of water fights as kids and even as adults.
And this is such a great thing to chat with people about.
Oh my gosh.
People love it.
Summertime.
It makes me think of slip and slides, right?
Water fights, water guns, and just fun stuff.
You know, being a kid or being an adult and feeling like a child again.
Exactly right.
Because it is more popular among adults.
My kids have water fights with just like super soaker water guns out by the pool all the time.
But adults get involved too sometimes because it's just so fun.
Oh yeah, no question.
No question.
All right.
So where are we going today with this?
Yeah, so start.
We'd love to hear.
I would love it.
I know our listeners would too.
Give us some details about Songkran.
What's it like?
Some listeners might not have heard of this before.
This might be new that there's this giant water festival.
So let us know some details about it.
Yeah.
So this was so long ago.
Like I said, I think it was 2007.
I had been living in Japan for a year and a half and it was the end of my contract.
And so I before I went home, I was going to travel Southeast Asia, of course.
So I took three months to travel Thailand, Vietnam and Laos.
That's what it was.
Thailand, Vietnam and Laos.
And I think I might have been smarter in my 20s.
I planned things a little better because I knew about Songkran.
I thought, oh, I should go.
And I hit it so that I arrived right in the middle of it.
And I chose Chiang Mai just because I...
I had heard it would be better than Bangkok.
It would be the best place to celebrate Songkran.
And it was just a giant water fight in the streets everywhere.
I remember the hostel where I was saying said do not leave the hostel without wrapping your camera in a plastic bag.
That's when we had actual cameras, you know, point and shoot cameras.
You're going to get wet.
Yeah, so i had to.
Every day i went out wrapped my money in a plastic bag, my camera and i remember it just being lovely and, you know, you think of a water fight.
You imagine people just with these intense guns just shooting each other.
But a lot of times it was just very happy people dancing in the street and people coming up and just smiling at me and just dropping water on my on me, on my head or wherever, just like saying so, like some kind of a blessing.
I can't remember exactly what they said.
I'm not super aggressive, more like light-hearted and fun.
Yes yes, So it was a really cool cultural experience.
I'll never forget it.
And it lasted multiple days then, right?
You said every day you had to leave with your phone wrapped.
Yeah, two or three days when I was there.
I don't remember.
Maybe it's a week or something that it lasts, but yeah.
Yeah, it was awesome.
And it sounds like it's celebrated in multiple countries, because I know Jessica was saying that she celebrated Songkran in Cambodia when she was there, but they called it Khmer New Year.
And it sounded like it was a little different.
She said they exchanged water balloons with some monks in a boat.
So it's So interesting how a lot of cultural celebrations are celebrated in many different areas, but with some variation, right.
So I love that you were able to celebrate it there.
A lot of our listeners I'm sure have celebrated it somewhere, either in thailand or in another country, so this is amazing.
This is something that connects a lot of us, and even if you haven't actually celebrated songkran, you have likely participated in a water fight, so this is something we have in common.
That's a fun thing to discuss with others.
Yes, I'm excited.
It is part of American culture, this concept of a water fight.
So today we're going to go through some vocabulary for our listeners, no matter what.
I do wonder how popular it is.
We know that this happens in Songkran in Southeast Asia.
We know it's common in, I wonder in Europe, for example.
I don't know.
We would love to know.
And this episode is on YouTube.
So come find the episode on YouTube and leave us a comment.
Are there water fights in your culture?
Is it part of a cultural celebration or a holiday or just for fun, maybe in the backyard, a little more casual like that?
Yes.
I love it.
There's actually a big water fight in northern Arizona on the 4th of July.
There's a water parade where you know how there's lots of 4th of July parades.
Yes.
This one in Heber, Arizona is all water.
So they're like big trucks full of water.
And then people are just shooting anybody that's at the parade.
And all of the people watching the parade also have water guns.
And it's a little more aggressive.
They're soaking the people in the cars and also across the street.
So you know you're going to get soaked.
Don't even take your phone.
Yeah yeah, if you go out, definitely get ready to get soaked.
You can't have a bad attitude about that.
You got to be, you know, fun about that right, we loved it.
We were sort of surprised because we just went to the fourth of july parade and we didn't know, so we were not prepared, but it was still so fun and it's still very hot out, of course, in arizona, so it was my gosh pleasant.
Yeah.
The weather needs to be really hot.
Yeah.
You need to be in a hot place for a water fight.
Otherwise it's just painful.
Otherwise it's not as fun.
Right.
Right.
It reminds me of the water challenge a few years ago, but it was like, Oh, the ice bucket challenge.
Oh, the ice bucket.
Did you ever do that?
Like dump an ice bucket over your head?
I never did it, but I saw a lot of my friends on Facebook doing it.
So it looks painful.
Did you do it?
It's much more pleasant when it's warm outside.
Someone's just putting a little water on your head as opposed to dumping a bucket of ice water.
Exactly.
Exactly.
So let's dive into some of this vocabulary, because when you talk with anybody in English about water fights, about their childhood or cultural celebrations, there's some vocabulary you're going to want to know.
So what's our first term?
OK, so the first one is water guns.
Right.
And, you know, I always think about guns in general in the US.
I think people probably have opinions, but we're just talking about water guns.
We're talking about toys.
Right.
I mean, I personally don't really believe in toy guns like BB guns that actually look like a gun.
They'll look like a gun, but this is different right.
This is a super soaker or I feel like you got to draw a line somewhere and kids have to have fun.
You know, they're usually very brightly colored neon colors, plastic.
So they're obviously not A real gun, right?
That's a really good point.
These look nothing like real guns.
It makes me think about Squid Game.
In one of the first episodes the dad gets like a toy out of one of those grab claw machines to just have a toy for his daughter's birthday.
And it's wrapped a gift and he gives it to her and it's a toy gun, but it looks just like a real gun.
And his daughter's.
Like mom wouldn't let me keep this up, but water guns don't look like that right, and they are getting more and more intricate.
When i was a kid they were like little tiny, colorful pistols and now super soakers are huge.
You can get drenched, oh geez.
Oh, we don't need that.
I mean, they were fine when we were kids, you know, just a little squirt, right.
We don't need the high-tech things.
The ones we have for our kids now are more like you fill it up and then pull and it shoots like quite a heavy stream.
But they're kind of small, colorful, they're fun.
But yeah, our kids love playing.
We have a rule at our house though, that you can't shoot anyone with water unless they're also holding a water gun.
I think that's a good, that's a good rule.
Yeah.
No one unarmed.
If I have my book, you cannot shoot me with water.
Oh yeah, for sure.
Or your laptop or something like that.
Seriously, right?
Keep the water away from over here.
But an interesting verb just came up.
The vocabulary, the verbs are important, too.
I said I got drenched, which is just a more interesting way of saying I got really wet.
Oh, that's a really common one.
That's a really common one.
And that's a word I feel like you hear a lot as a kid.
Right.
Oh, I got drenched.
My friend drenched me.
Would you say that?
I guess it's really an adjective to say I was drenched.
Yeah.
Because we don't really use it to say they drenched me.
No, we don't.
We don't.
We just say I am drenched, to say I'm wet or I was drenched, if someone got me wet, and this means super wet, like almost as if you jumped in a pool with your clothes on.
Right, exactly.
This is not just like a spot yeah, i'm drenched.
Oh my gosh, what did you do?
Right exactly yes, So super interesting.
Also, water balloons, like we mentioned, Jessica's celebration are just those little balloons you can fill with water and throw.
We used to play a really fun game where we would each hold the ends of a towel and then flip it and it would pass the water balloon over and they would try to catch it in their towel.
Have you ever played that?
I haven't played that.
No, that sounds fun.
Yeah.
We played it at like family reunions or there's.
There are all these new they're.
They're really getting inventive now with water balloons where you can fill like 100 at once.
Have you seen those?
Oh, my gosh.
It's like each water balloon is connected to sort of a straw and you put the whole thing on a hose and it fills 100 all at once and you just drop it in a bucket.
Oh my gosh.
Which is crazy.
When we were kids, it took so long to fill up water balloons.
That is insane.
And then there's hoses, right?
So typically you know, if you're doing this in the backyard of your parents' house with kids, you have your hose that stretches out and then fill up those balloons by hand.
Right.
Exactly.
Right.
And inevitably someone just points the hose and then you're really getting soaked because you're just drenching each other with the garden hose.
Yeah.
Yes, for sure.
Guys, this a lot of people are going to have memories of water fights as a child.
So and we've talked about this before on the podcast how asking someone about their childhood is one of the best ways to connect on a deeper level.
So we want to share a couple of conversation starters.
Where you can ask someone about this, about either water fights in their childhood or cultural celebrations they might have been a part of.
Yeah, I love that.
And we're going to do that in just a minute here.
Okay Aubrey, I love that we're going to get into some of those conversation starters that you mentioned before.
Should we just throw out the first one of how our listeners can start that conversation?
Yes, absolutely.
So I would just say, did you have water fights as a kid?
Just like that, right?
Super simple.
Just asking someone, did this happen when you were a child?
But I often will use that a little bit more informal slang term of kid as a kid.
In English, right?
It sounds just a little bit more formal to say as a child.
Both work, but this is keeping it on that very informal level to say, did you do that as a kid?
Did you have water fights as a kid? yeah and for our listeners guys you can extract the construction here right if you're not talking about water fights you could say did you have blank like birthday parties as a kid or did you do uh roller skating or did you do whatever whatever it is camping as a kid did you ride bikes Exactly.
And that as a kid replaces when you were a child, when you were a kid, right?
It's just that little bit more informal, quicker to jumpstart into this really fun conversation.
Yeah, get beyond the question and get to the content and the connection, right Aubrey?
Exactly.
And our second one is the question I asked Lindsay right at the beginning of the episode what's the biggest water fight you've been in?
And then, if someone has ever been to Songkran, this would be the perfect time for them to share about that.
They might have a chance to share about a really big water fight that was a cultural celebration.
Or if they haven't been to something like that, they can just share the biggest water fight they were in as a kid or as an adult.
Yes, and I think this, I'm thinking about our listeners in Thailand, right?
Um, I guess by the time this comes out, sangkron will have passed a little bit.
But either way um, this is a great conversation starter with native speakers who might be traveling.
Right, this would be a really great way to offer them tips, open this up, ask them about their childhood and water fights.
Give them that tip that I got, which is put your camera in a bag anytime you leave the hostel for the next week, because you could ruin it.
Right, get the conversation going with something from your own culture.
How cool.
Yes, exactly right.
What a great way to deepen a connection.
This is not small talk, but it's also very safe, right?
We're getting to a deeper level, but not about anything that could create any feelings of awkwardness or make someone uncomfortable.
Right politics religion, those things.
If you ask about childhood, especially something very fun people will all have very positive memories related to this.
It's a great thing to start a conversation about.
Yeah, we call that the low-hanging fruit Right, Aubrey.
That could be another episode.
This is the low hanging fruit.
These are easy topics, but substantial topics.
Topics where you can get some substance and connection, but it's easy.
Like Aubrey said, it's not going to offend anyone.
You're not hitting any touchy subjects that you want to avoid.
So exactly right.
Get away from the weather and just what did you do this weekend?
Those are great for sort of small talk.
But to get a little deeper, ask something like this that could spark something really fun.
Just as a takeaway.
Always a good idea to ask about someone's past, someone's childhood memories, but especially with this type of focus about something that would be really fun.
Perfect.
I love it, Aubrey.
So good.
Thanks for bringing this in today.
This is fantastic.
I mean, that is the takeaway for today.
Go for the easy stuff, but the substantial stuff, right?
Go for something that gives you some fruit, right?
Bare fruit in the conversation.
I love it.
So good.
Exactly.
So fun.
Awesome.
Hopefully one day I'll get to go to Songkran.
Fingers crossed.
You should.
I totally recommend it.
It's really cool.
Especially because it's so hot at that time in Thailand and Southeast Asia.
So you kind of... You welcome it.
Yes.
Get me wet.
Cool me off.
For sure.
All right, Aubrey.
Thanks for hanging out today.
I'll talk to you soon.
All right.
See you next time.
Bye.
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