By: Suphamat Phonphra (Bee), BABSEACLE Events Coordinator
The Thai New Yea
r Water Festival, Song Kran, was the perfect opportunity for BABSEACLE and BABSEACLE Foundation to advertise its Access to
Justice Weekend Event, taking place in January 2015.
The Access to Justice Weekend combines the 6th Trio For Justice comprises a half-marathon, a 10K and 5K run/walk as well as a 3K fun run/walk with the popular Access to Justice Public Interest Fair (A2J). These will be followed by the Access to Justice
During the Song Kran weekend, myself and several other BABSEACLE staff, interns, and volunteers took it upon ourselves to raise awareness about this exciting upcoming event whilst we enjoyed the festivities and the three-day public holiday. We took part in the Singha Song Kran Chiang Mai mini marathon of 3K and 10K at Huey Tueng Tao Park and handed out leaflets detailing the events taking place at the Access to Justice Weekend such as our Trio For Justice half marathon, run/walk 10K, 5K, and 3K for kids, the Access to Justice Public Interest Fair as well as the Legal Movie Night, Legal Workshops, and Celebration Dinner. We also spent the entire festival wearing the Trio For Justice Run T-shirts from this year’s event. While this might sound a little disgusting, anyone who has ever experienced the Song Kran Festival would understand that these shirts were basically be
ing washed continuously all 3 days by a never ending buffeting of water gun fighting and thrown buckets of water.We spent most of our time at Tha Pha Gate where several big companies such as Coca Cola, Bangkok Airlines, and Air Asia had set up stages with music and dancers for the entertainment of the rather immense crowds. We spent our time here not only enjoying the entertainment and music but also talking to people about the Access to Justice Weekend. The conversations generally started by someone coming over to our group and asking “Hey, what’s Trio for Justice?” unaware of the tirade of information that was about to be hurled at them by the group, along with a fair amount of water from our guns. We had a lot of fun playing in the water fight with locals and tourists. Equipped with only our water guns, we were completely overwhelmed by the trucks driving by throwing huge buckets of water, but it was a great experience nonetheless.
Overall, the Song Kran Festival resulted in a lot of wet clothes, a great party atmosphere, and a lot of fun. Amongst all the water fights, we somehow managed to raise a lot of awareness around Chiang Mai about the upcoming Access to Justice Weekend.