Khun Iad came in to wake me up at 5 AM when it was time for me to take a shower. I peeled myself out of bed, adjusted my eyes and went to the shower. No water heater. I forgot that hot water in the shower is a Westerner thing--not Thai. That's why in homes of Westerners living in Thailand there is a big box in every shower that houses a water heater. I had a great 5AM cold Thai shower. I got out as fast as I could and got dressed. Enter Khun Oy and Khun Iad. "Alexie you wear flower shirt?" K. Oy was in a very cute and appropriately flowered shirt and wanted me to put on my bright orange Hawaiian/Songkran shirt. I told them that I had another yellow/flowery shirt that I would rather wear. They let it happen thank God. Khun Oy then presented me with a Songkran present, which they assured me was 'large.' It was a long polka dot dress, similar to the one Brit wore to her conformation ceremony in 1995. It could actually be really cute, just on a different body type. Next they proudly presented me a hair dryer and straightener so I could fix my hair. I guess K. Iad noticed that I use them at the Bangkok home. After I dried my hair K. Iad said she wanted to straighten it. So she sat me down and straightened it, all the while her and K. Oy were giggling and calling me Barbie. They really tried to make me feel as comfortable and at home though and I am so grateful for that!
We gathered our things and left. I managed to sleep for about 15 minutes of our hour-long drive. We arrived at the temple first, took off our shoes outside and shuffled in. It was packed and there was a stage full of food. I met a lot of family members and went with a few to do a short prayer with incense at the Buddha statue. When we sat back down a row of 25-30 monks walked on the stage and sat behind the food. It turns out that each family brought 7 or so dishes to feed all the monks and set them all up on the stage.
We sat on our knees, making sure our feet were not pointed at the monks and did a series of prayers with hands in wai formation the whole time. I believe we were blessing the food together, but I kind of just made that up. Then we all got up and each family formed their own human chain by holding onto each others' arms or waist. The head of the family was holding the family's rice bowl and lead us all to a line where he put a scoop of rice in each monk's bowl.
After that we went back inside, knelt, hands in a wai and more praying. Then the monks started eating. Yes, we prayed the entire time that they ate. It was awkward for me to revere these monks who look like regular men (and kids, the youngest was probably 5-years old). They had food stuck on their lips, talked amongst themselves with their mouths full, spilled the food, etc. After the meal (plus dessert!) some people got up and cleaned up all of the dishes and food. There was a final prayer and the monks left. All of us "common folk" then took the leftovers, which is apparently good luck. It was weird going to an hour long Buddhist temple service while my family and friends were celebrating Easter on the other side of the globe. It made me miss everyone but was an awesome experience.
(l) My two favorite children monks at the end of the line (r) Families adding their food to the stage
From the temple we drove to K. Iad's house. It's a stilted one-level house with random wood slabs joined together and pictures of the King and family members everywhere you look. It's also surrounded by 20+ mango trees. We picked a few mangos and ate them right off the tree--alloy mak! I was not a fan of mangos when I first came to Thailand, but now that we have them so often i've started to really enjoy them.
Under the stilted house is a dirt-floored area that has 4 hammocks attached to the floor above them. It's the hang out spot...at least during the dry season! When I first walked into the house I hit my head on the ceiling rafters, twice. No joke. That is how tall I am here. I looked around and only a few of the men were taller than me. My two-time disaster was the family's favorite joke for the rest of the day.
There are 6 rooms, that I saw, in the house and squat toilets. The kitchen was a random assortment of old dishware and buckets. It is all very different than the house where I live in Bangkok. I was definitely getting the real Thai experience.
They have a very large family so everyone ran around and played while some others hung around with me a bit too. No one speaks much English and my Thai is extremely minimal, so we just laughed a lot as usual. It is actually exhausting getting laughed at so much during one day. By the end of the day I was very frustrated with it. We did have fun though and some of the younger girls showed me some very cute traditional Thai dances.
After a few hours six of us (K. Iad, K. Oy, K. Chin, K. Oy's sister, a family friend and I) got into a car and drove to the more urban part of Suphan Buri. Songkran is the Thai New Years which means a sort of "spring cleaning" for temples if you want to make it simple. It is a time to cleanse all of the Buddha statues and visit the temples. The first one we went to was the Temple of the Elephants. Here we performed the now familiar incense, praying, candle, gold leaf rituals. But, instead of putting the gold leaf on Buddha statues, we put it on a giant 3-headed elephant statue.
Praying with candles and incense, the 3-headed elephant, the fortune telling "pick up sticks", and the elephant where people put the gold leaf (plus a close up on his hind-left-thigh)
After all of that we added on a new ritual. We each knelt down next to a heavy gold elephant statue. After performing the wai we each had to pick it up using only our ring finger...twice. To accomplish it means more good luck. I managed to do it even though a few of my Thai buddies couldn't. Thailand must be bizzaro world--I'm tall enough to hit ceiling rafters and have more arm strength than other people.
Lifting the heavy statue, feet pointed back of course!
We left the elephant temple and went to another one that was more carnival-like. It had so many things going on and so many people. We did all the usual stuff, plus cleansed a Buddha statue and played a coin toss game. We each took a Baht coin and had to throw it into the belly button of a fat Buddha. Which I read isn't technically the Buddha, but another iconic Buddhist character. Bizzaro world was reversed back to normal and I was the only one who couldn't get it in the belly button hole--no good luck for me on this round. Oh well!
At the end we went to the dock and fed the fish. With nets they "cage" the fish in certain areas to make sure that there are always fish there to feed. It was sad though because there were so many fish that they were all flopping on top of one another. Also, they had their mouths open coming to the surface almost the whole time because they knew they were going to get fed. But I think feeding them somehow gave me good luck--which makes up for my bad luck when I couldn't get the Buddha coin toss and adds to a few other good luck things I had done in the morning...
A portion of the hungry and overcrowded fish!
We left that temple and headed back towards K. Iad's house. On the way we passed the start of the huge nation-wide Songkran water fight! There were pick up trucks everywhere with their truck beds full of people and a giant barrel of water. The people would fill buckets and squirt guns from the barrel and soak anyone else in a truck, on a motorbike or on the sidewalk passing by. It is also common practice to mix flower and water and rub it on people's faces or on cars. Our car got hit a lot by water and the water/flour mixture, but we were safely inside with all of the doors and windows shut! I tried to get some photos from inside the car because I knew I wasn't going to be able to take them with my non-waterproof camera once I was a part of the fight!
We made a pit-stop on the way home at the family friend's house. His parents have now moved in with him because they can no longer take care of themselves. Here we performed another Songkran ritual of washing the feet and hands of the elders of the household. We all lined up one by one performed a wai and cleansed their hands and feet with water. They, in turn, put their hands on each of us and said prayers of good luck. When it was over the 90 year old woman grabbed my arm and rubbed my skin. She kept saying, in Thai, that she wanted foreigner skin. It was pretty hilarious with a little dash of awkward. We said our goodbyes in Thai and then the two 90-year olds started waving their hands and saying "good-bye" which is hilarious because i've never seen a Thai person wave before!!! They just put their hands together and bow. Everyone kept telling me they were quite taken by me. Looks like pale skin and blonde hair really make a girl seem appealing here.
We stopped for a lunch/dinner and then drove back to K. Iad's house. After running around and getting a few things in order we loaded up the back of our truck and were on our way! Two men were driving while the back held five girls under the age of 8, K. Oy, K. Oy's sister, K. Iad and I. K. Iad wouldn't let me sit on the side of the truck because she said men were going to grab me...turns out she was right!
While we participated in the water fight any Thai person that would see me would shout "farang!" ("foreigner!") and throw as much water as they could on me. Also I was constantly being grabbed at and people would try and rub the flour mixture all over my face. Suphan Buri is a small city that I'm sure not many (if any) white people ever come to. I was a very rare sight there! After a while we found that it was fun to have me duck down and hide in the truck and we'd drive up to another group where I would pop up and spray them all with water guns. This 'farang-sneak-attack' caused lots of excitement every time! K. Iad was very protective of me though because I had a lot of boys grabbing my arms and sometimes hair. I also had the teenage boys running after us saying "I love you! I love America! Welcome to Thailand!" It was all so much fun and so hilarious! If there weren't so many dangerous aspects of it I wish the U.S. would consider doing a nation-wide water fight.
We got back to K. Iad's drenched to the core, which felt nice on a 90+ degree day! I showered with my very first bucket shower (you just pour buckets of water over you while standing by a drainage system). We hung around a little longer while the men drank a little more and teased me a lot more. Finally at about 7 K. Oy and I left to go back to Bangkok...but not until we washed the hands and feet of her parents, gramma and gramma's sister.
It was an amazing two days and I'm so lucky I got to experience an important Thai holiday as authentically as possible. Yes there were language barrier difficulties as usual, but there was something so universal about the fun we had during the water fight. I just loved it!
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