October 8th Festival

My host mom took me to a festival that was located at the local temple in Don Sak.  This festival had us celebrating sending the spirits back up to their heaven.  I'll explain, because that sounds confusing.  About a week before (October 1st or 2nd-I don't remember the actual date) there was another festival where we fed the monks, and then the spirits of the dead would come down from the heavens (with the help of the monks) and then they would spend the next week living among the...living.  Now that their week was over, we had to send them back to the heavens.  It was quite beautiful, the monks chanted for a long time, and we did a lot of things that were unique to the area.  I met another farang-foreigner, who was a teacher at the school.  He wasn't very sociable, so we left him and headed off to celebrate the festival. 

 My host mom and I praying at the alter that was set up.  We got some flowers with a part of a palm leave behind it along with our insensce to burn while praying.  We then had to leave the flowers, but they were so pretty I wanted to take them with me.  But I didn't because I knew I would get some weird looks for that. 

 The top of the alter, (we are praying below it).  As you can tell from the background, there are a lot of people here.  From what I could see, there was at least one person from every family in all of Don Sak. 

 Putting my incensce in the sand in from of the alter.  My host mom is watching to make sure I do it right.  Haha or at least to make sure I don't burn myself.  I have dont that before, when the ashes fell on my hand, and let me tell you....it hurts!

 A food statue.  This is a statue that is actually made of of food.  It is a type of kanom (sweet) but it works like fabric.  It is thin and woven, and you can use it to make these different decorations.  Each one of the statues had a different meaning, and you would add your money to it to give thanks, or if you wanted something.  This one is supposed to be a Dor-cha-dar (a Thai headress for Thai dancers), but I am not sure of the meaning of any of them. 

 Me behind the food carvings.  The one that is on the left side of the picture is another Dor-cha-dar, and the one on the right of the picture is a boat.  The boat holds special meaning, because the monks travel on them during certain festivals, and are always beautifully decorated.  There were about 8 of these food statues in total. 

 Now this is something that I am not totally sure how to explain.  It is a platform, where you can stick money, food, anything you want, as offerings to the gods.  But later in the day, they will set the firecrackers off that are located beneath it.  Then the people will start tossing the stuff off the top of the platform to the waiting crowd.  I'm not sure the meaning of it, but it sure was amusing to watch. 

 Setting the firecrackers off from under the platform, and all of the people waiting to attempt to catch something that is thrown from the platform. 

 After the fireworks were done exploding, the children would all run up and climb on the platform trying to get something...if they didn't like what they grabbed, they would just go and throw it into the crowd.  There were a variety of different things that I saw being thrown-kanoms (sweets), fruit, I'm pretty sure I saw a pineapple go flying by.  Lots of different things, but the crowd seemed to enjoy it. 

 This is another even that happened at the temple.  There was a big pole, and at the top of the pole there was about $500 baht.  You could climb the pole, and then if you could grab the money, you got to keep it.  I saw a bunch of older men try, but no one could get up the pole.  Then these younger boys decided to give it a shot.  There were three of them, and they decided to climb one on top of the other in order to get to the money. 

They eventually did get the money, but the guy on top ended up standing on the second guys head.  The crowd cheered for them, but I felt bad for the two guys on the bottom.  The very bottom guy had two boys standing on him, and the middle guy had someone standing on his head.  I don't think that bothered them, because they were 500 Baht richer.  Haha

Before heading home, we headed to the shrine for my host mom's family.  We prayed to them, and left them some incense, as well as cleaned up the shrine area-free of leaves and dirt.