April has always been the most exciting month for Burmese as it is the month to celebrate Thingyan – water festival. It is also a New Year in Myanmar calendar. Burmese around the world celebrate Thingyan with various type of seasonal food, music and lots of water.

Over at Myanmar blogosphere, the bloggers are also celebrating Thingyan in their own style. Myanmar Mahar Thingyan 2007 is a blog dedicated for this year Thingyan created by Service+ and involve lots of contributors, photos, latest Thingyan news and entertainment.

Image from flappingwing's Flickr page
Thingyan is a time for doing good deeds, purify the past year and turn a new leaf for the next year. While youths enjoy celebrating in Manduts, elders would meditate, donate to charities, and exercise Buddhism teaching at monasteries and pagoda. Among them blogger Ma Gyi writes about various types of annual Thingyan Charities undertaken by her friend.

Thingyan brings different experiences and memories to different people. Y & G explain why they most like about Thingyan,

It makes us clean and fresh for the new year. On New Year Day people do meritorious deeds. They set free many animals such as fishes, cows and goats. This is the festival I like best.

While KSN COMPUTER CENTRE(MDY) talks of changes in Thingyan culture and current day Myanmar youth.

Now a day Thingyan becomes bad because of fighting, drinking alcohol much, accidents and unacceptable fashions such as wearing very thin or short or sexy dresses. The real culture for Myanmar such as going to pagoda, monastery, paying respects to the aged persons becomes less and less…

Kalosayhtoo also tries to differentiate between rural, urban and overseas Thingyan including his favorite moments of the festival.

Calling Myanmar residents in Singapore for Thingyan celebrations

Thingyan also provides great opportunities for business people as everyone will be shopping for water gears, cloths, fashion accessories, renting cars and not forgetting groceries for preparingThingyan food. One of them is a blogger Barnyarbarnyar who writes about her idea to sell BBQ and hoping to earn some cash as well as enjoying Thingyan from her shop.

Music, dances and floats are crucial factors for Thingyan festival in Myanmar. Various types of dance groups from many organizations will take part in the best floats and Thingyan group dancing competitions every year. Every year many new Thingyan songs are composed and many classical favorite songs will be replayed. A lot of hard work and efforts go into the preparation for the country wide festival. Many Myanmar blogs post songs and photos of Thingyan celebrations; among them, blogger Maydar-wii posts her old time favorite guiter notes on Thingyan songs, and aclmdy takes photos of Mandalay Thingyan Dance preparations.

Having ten days long public holidays for Thingyan this year, many Myanmar Bloggers are still writing about their daily Thingyan celebrations. This would be the longest Thingyan holiday in Myanmar and surely will be a memorable one.

Happy Thingyan and Prosperous Myanmar New Year 2007 to all Myanmar out there.