It's been a busy couple of days in the village. Monday was a setting up day for the big pre-daddy day festival. Tuesday was the pre-dad day and Wednesday was possibly the hugest day in the Thai calendar...Father's Day!
Pre-Father's Day day was held out at our beautiful local lake. The event
even made the news on Tuesday night due to the provincial mayor being in the hood. The security was rather amusing... 2 police escort cars and a security guard car coming up the rear. At least they weren't packing machine guns (which is not unheard of).Lots of activities and displays were on show and lots of free
food which is always a winner with me! The Department of Environment set up an impressive stall with displays on how to recycle, make compost, make environmentally friendly detergents and explained environmental issues such as global warming and the effects of el nino, etc. It's heartening to know that some sort of environmental education is present in Thailand because often it appears to be nonexistent.Other activities included the Dharma Wall where people
could write their good thoughts and hopes. Then the Release the Demons tree where you write your bad thoughts (3 guesses what I wrote!!) and the monks come to
chant and release the negativity to the universe. You may notice the yellow theme.. yellow is the King's birthday colour and Father's Day is essentially a celebration to the King (and every Monday of the entire year) so everyone, and I mean everyone wears yellow.Here's some of the sweeties on offer...all free of course!
The best part of the day was when thousands (possibly a million) fish were released into the lake. This lake is part of the temple lands and is protected from fishing so the fish are free to go forth and multiply, hoorah! The government allocates money to a village fund a few times a
year and hands out hundreds of thousands of baht to each village for community care activities such as this. People were also free to take bags of fish home to breed for whatever purposes. There were literally hundreds of bags of fish being released...brilliant work that makes me all warm and fuzzy.
4 commentaramas:
It's amazing the difference in the way holidays are celebrated in the villages than in the big cities. What a neat experience!
Absolutely fascinating Mel. I love that I get to see another side of Thai life via your blog.
C x
Mel;
Do folks have some special belief about the color of their birthday?? Like is their lucky color or something of the sort?
Our Daughter was born on friday which is blue - so finding a cute bedding with blue (that wasn't overly pucky floral was a challenge) but I thougth it be nice to have that in the color scheme for her future room...so I was wondering if there any other significance to it - our Thai friends here said it didn't matter much!
Just wondering??
H
Amy & C - it's so so different in the vil! Quite nice wherever you are though. I really loved the fish release at this one.
H - as far as I know there's not so much significance in the colour. The day of birth is really important though as that is considered lucky (J&I got married on a Monday cos that was his birth day of the week)so meant it was auspicious.
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