Thai New Years!

Today begins the first day of the Thai New Year. It's a fun time in Thailand, with April being the hottest time of the year and people celebrating in the streets with the water festival. It's a great time to be young and single where people spray each other with water guns, and cups and buckets of water. Obviously, young women are favorite targets. As explained in Wikipedia -

The Thai New Year (Southeast Asian New Year) (สงกรานต์ = Songkran in Thai language) is celebrated every year on April 13 to April 15. It is also celebrated in Cambodia, Laos, and Myanmar (Burma). Sri Lanka also celebrates a similar festival called Sinhalese and Tamil new year on the same dates.
The date of the festival was originally set by astrological calculation, but it is now fixed . If these days fall on a weekend, the missed days off will be taken on the days immediately following (But Sri Lanka still uses an astrological calculation to set the dates and times based on the sun's positional change and those dates and times are used to start the festival events). Songkran falls in the hottest time of the year in Thailand, at the end of the dry season. Until 1888 the Thai New Year was the beginning of the year in Thailand; thereafter April 1 was used until 1940. January 1 is now the beginning of the year. The traditional Thai New Year has been a national holiday since then.

The water festival is also representative of cleansing, and making good karma. You can read more about it on wikipedia