My First Rotary Event!

As many of my readers probably know, Rotary does a lot of things for the community.  My host Rotary club is the same way, though this is the first time that I have actually been to an event that we have hosted.  Some of the things that we have done are: creating shelters for bus benches, giving wheelchairs to those in need, and we put in a water purification center at one of the schools. 

I went to the grand unveiling of the water purification center, and heres what it looked like.

 This is the project that we helped to fund, along with the Surat Thani Men's Rotary Club.  (Somoson Rotary Club). 

 The actual system.  The system flilters water from the river nearby,and it goes to the big silver canister (in the left corner ofthe picture).  It then goes through all of these other little nooks and crannies, being treated with a variety of different things until it is drinkable.  I didn't totally understand the translation or the proccess since it was spoken in very quick Thai. 

 Lunch.  I couldn't post this post without talking about my lunch.  It was extremely good, but also very spicy.  It was the first time that I have eaten food that was soo spicy it made me cry.  Normally I either drink a lot of water, or try to avoid eating a lot of the spicy parts, but I didn't have any water.  Everyone at the table, and the surrounding students, giggled and eventually brought me a glass of water, which I was very thankful for.

 This is me and one of my Rotary members standing by the tap area.  It was extremely hot here, but since I am the exchange student, I had to wear my Rotary jacket.  I really didn't want to, but the circumstances made me wear it. 

 The group of us (Sritapee Rotary Club) standing infront of the project.

 Me standing there with a glass of the water from the taps.  It was pretty good water, it tasted like...water...so thats all good. 

Standing with some of the school kids while eating icecream.  I got some too, but I just ate mine faster. 

So that is my first Rotary project that I got to go to.  I'm not sure if I will get to go to others, but they at least brought me to one, which was very nice. 

Loi Krathong!

The Loi Krathong Festival is a pretty amazing festival that I got to participate in.  It takes place on the evening of the full moon of the 12gh month in the traditional Thai lunar calendar...in our wester timings, this is in November.  "Loi" means "to float" and a "krathong" is traditionally made from a section of banana tree trunk.  Modern krathongs are made of bread or styrofoam, but there are still some people who stick with the traditional banana tree trunk.  A krathong will be decorated elaborately with folded banana leaves, flowers, candles, and incense sticks.  A low value coin is sometimes included as an offering to the river spirits.

During the night of the full moon, Thais will float their frathong on a river, canal, or a pond lake.  The festival is believed to originate in an ancient practice of paying respect to the spirit of the waters.  The origins of Loi Krathong are stated to be in Sukhothai, but it is an argued point because it could be an invention from the Bangkok period.  According to the writings of H.M. King Rama IV in 1863, the originally Brahmanical festival was adaped by Buddhists in Thailand as a ceremonly to honour the original Buddha.  Apart from venerating the Buddha with light (the candle on the "raft"), the act of floating away the candle raft is symbolic of letting fo of all one's grudges, anger and defilements, so that one can start life afresh on a better foot.  People will also cut their fingernails and hair and add them to the raft as a symbol of letting fo of the bad parts of onself.  Many Thai people believe that floating a raft will bring good luck, and they do it to honor and thank the Goddess of Water, Phra Mae Khongkha (Thai: พระแม่คงคา). 

Yi Peng-Loi Krathong coincides with the Lanna festival, known as Yi Peng.  Due to a difference between the old Lanna calenter and the Thai calendar, Yi Peng is held on a full moon of the 2nd month of the Lanna calendar (confusing I know!).  A multitude of Lanna-style sky lanterns (khom loi), litterally floating lanterns, are launched into the air, where they resemble large flocks of giant fluorescent jellyfish gracefully floating by through the sky.  The festival is meant as a time for tham bun, to make merit.   People usually make khom loi from a thin fabric, such as rice paper, to which a candle or fuel cell is attached.  when the fuel cell is lit, the resulting hot air which is trapped inside the lantern , creates enough lift for the khom loi to float up in to the sky. 

So thats a little big of history on this festival. Onto my day with this festival!

This is the some Loi Krathongs that have already been deposited into the water, mine looked similar to this but the flowers were pink.  But this was the general idea of it.  You could buy one for about 100 baht, but my host mom and I decided to make them for our family. 

Sending the khom loi up into the sky.  I bought two of these for myself to send up into the air in Canada, as well as a souvineer.  They were really quite gorgeous, and the sky was speckled with lots of these twinkling lights. 

As I somewhat mentioned earlier, my host mom and I decided to make our own.  We made them out of the traditional banana tree trunk.  After cutting the piece of tree off, we brought it in and attached the banana leaves to it.  I spent a lot of time folding the banana leaves...twice.... I did it wrong the first time, and no one noticed until I had them all finished....so I had the pleasure of unfolding all of them, and then refolding them the proper way.  It really does pay to pay attention.

Here's me working on my loi krathong.  I was slower than my host mom...she had two done by the time I had one done, but she's had more experience.  As you can tell I am hard at work. :)

Here's me actually working on the thing.  After a while your thumbs start to hurt since you are pushing nails through three layers of banana leaves and into the trunk of a tree.  Eventually we found alternative ways to get the nails into the trunk.

The finished product! Well this is somewhat the finished product...at least the part that mom and I worked on.  We still had to put the candle, incense, and other things like hair, nails, and the low denomination of baht.  It was quite fun.  We did stick all of the (strange) things into it.  I didn't know the meaning behind sticking my hair on the raft, but now I do.  We accidently stuck all of my stuff on the wronge loi krathong, so we had to redo it.  So my hair had to be cut twice, and I was running low on fingernails and toenails.  Haha.

The town (Don Sak) had a slight competition on who could make the nicest loi krathong.  This was one of the submissions.  As far as I know it was just for decoration, and didn't actually get stuck in the water.  For the most part, this is all made of folded banana leaves.  Pretty eh?

Another submission for the competition, but this one uses a bit more color.  This one had a lot more flowers (mainly orchids) and the banana leaves were less intricate, but it is still just as spectacular as the one that is pictured above.

The townsfolk sending the khom loi's up into the air!  There were quite a few of them, and I even got the chance to send one up.  It was extremely funny when the people would attempt to send the khom loi's into the air, but they wouldn't have enough in them to go up so they would fly over peoples heads, and the people would duck for cover. 

It was hard to get a good picture of all of them in the air, so here is a picture of a few being off in the distance, with on being close up. 

My town didn't have that big of a celebration but there are some places that had thousands..ours maybe had a few hundred..maybe less.  Haha

Not my town, but here is an example of the beauty that the khom loi can have.  Some people in my town attached sparklers (the firework) so that was prettty . 

Nam-Too-em!!

Nam-too-em, or flooding. 

My first natural disaster happened when I was in Thailand, and it was flooding.  Granted, I didn't get the opportunity to see a lot of the flooding, since it was deemed "unsafe" for me, but I did get to see a lot.

My town of Surat Thani, only got a few inches of water, which cancelled school for about a week...Other places weren't as lucky and had water chest high. 

 This is the majority of water that I got to see, a few inches of water on the side of the road. 

 More water, though this picture shows if flooding a ditch.

 Haha more water..all of these pictures were taken out of a moving car, so theres not much to say.

A car going through the water :) haha.  I wish I could say more about what these pictures are about, but its just water.  Haha.  I could go on and on, making things up, but its not worth it. 

 This is something that I did not see, but I thought I'd show you how bad it got in other areas of Thailand.  I stole these pictures off of google, so I don't own them.  I do wonder how the cars moved with that much water...it can't be good for the engine....

 Showing more flooding in the streets.  It was really weird watching the television and seeing all the water.  I didn't understand how it could get that high and just stay there...It still boggles my mind. 

This was actually taken in Ko Samui, the island close to my house.  I thought it was a funny picture so I put it up.  Haha. 

So that was my first natural disaster, though I didn't really get to see much of it.  I thought I'd share it with you. 

Miss Queen Rainbow Sky 2010

Miss Queen Rainbow Sky 2010....what can I say about this experience....it was unique to say the least.  You may be thinking...that's quite the title, but trust me, the name fits the pagaent. 

Miss Queen Rainbow Sky was a beauty pagaent for Ga-tooey, or lady-boys...or in our terms gay men who like to dress in womans clothing.  These men were absolutely gorgeous, and at first, I didn't believe that they were men...I honestly thought that most of them were women...but I was wrong.

Why was I here? Well my moms shrimp farm was experiencing some flooding, so I had to stay at a friends house for a few days.  P-Jim, my host moms friend, was judging this and decided to bring me along to see it.  Here are some pictures of this unique event. 

This is one of the lady-boys that was competing in this pagaent.  I honestly didn't think that it was a boy, but I guess thats because boys in Canada really don't have bodies that look like that. Haha.  So the pagaent was like most pagaents, lots of talking, walking, and costume changes.  This particular girl....err...boy?? was one of my favorites, just because she didn't look like a total Barbie, unlike some of the other girls..boys..??

 Another one of the lady-boys.  All of their dresses were very pretty, and their shoes!! I couldn't get a picture of their shoes from my seat, but my oh my..those were insane shoes.  They were platform heels that were at least six inches high...and thats with out the heel....they were insane!

 A group shot of the top six finalists, the others had already been eliminated.  Pink was the most dominate color of dress, but there were blues, greens, and whites.

 This girl was the sixth runner up, and she didn't take it to well...or at least her group didn't. If you thought girls can throw hissies, wait till you see a lady-boy throw one...it was quite amusing.  From the Thai that I understood, it was quite rude.  The people in her "entourage" were absolutely livid that she came in 6th, and were yelling all sorts of insults at the other contestants.  Security was called and they calmed down for a bit, but it still made me laugh. 

 This is a group shot with all of the contestants, nine in total, and there were only a few that I could tell were men right away.  The others, not so much, unless they talked.  Some of the girls still had men style voices, but the majority of them must have taken something to have a more feminine voice. 

 Mid-show entertainment.  So this part was.....scary, frightening, disturbing?? Lot's of different emotions went through my mind.  She/He was singing "I will Survive" and it was....uh.... hahaha I don't know what to say.  The dancing was unique, and the dress was slightly too short to cover everything, and some of the dance moves made their underwear clad lower parts come shooting out...I didn't see any skin...but it was still a little startling to see "that" flinging out of a dress. 

 Just another picture of some of the contestants.  It was difficult to get a picture of the colors because there was lots of smoke, and I couldn't get a good shot.  The green dress is actually bright green, Hannah's favorite color, and was a gorgeous dress. 

 The final moments: This was the final moments before the winner was announced.  The girl in the pink dress ended up winning, with green dress coming in second.

A shot of the top five competitors, and their winnings ranging from 1,000 baht to 5,000 baht.  ($33-$166.66) 

It was quite a unique night, and I had a lot of fun.  Though I didn't totally understand what was going on, I had a good idea.  The winner of the pagaent would go on to compete against the rest of Southern Thailand, and if she won, on to compete against the rest of Thailand. 

It was fun.

Cha-Prak Festival!

This is quite visually an amazing festival, with lots of colors and lots of floats.  We headed off to Surat Thani since Surat Thani has the biggest and most impressive festival in all of Southern Thailand, and went to watch the parade.  It was hot, to say the least, I was sweating like a turkey at Thanksgiving, and my host mom was feeling the heat as well....at least I'm not the only one who found it hot. 

 There were a lot of people lining the streets to watch the festival, so getting a god picture was sometimes hard to do.  The parade started by having various groups of people walk down the streets, in various garments.  Some held pictures of the King and Queen, and others carried flowers and signs saying who each group was. 

 This was a group of people that I thought was interesting since they were carring the baskets on their head.  It was very difficult to get their picture since there were soo many people. 

 The floats.  The floats were absolutely magnificent.  There were a lot of them, over 150 (from each temple in the province...so thats a lot of floats).  Some came by water, but for the most part they came by car.  Each one was different, but they all had some similarities.  This one has the seven dragon heads, which can be seen behind the Saturday Buddha. 

 Very Eco-Friendly.  Instead of having a car tow these giant floats down the street, it was all people powered.  Roughly 50 people per float, and they would have a rope, and pull these giant beasts down the street.  The spectators would have the ability to run up and help to "pull" the float, but for the most part all you did was hold the rope, it was moving already.  We only stayed to see seven floats, instead of all of them because it was just too hot for me...and my mom...but mainly me.  Haha.

 We came back later in the evening, when it had cooled off a bit.  Most of the floats were sitting a long the water front, which caused for a lot of traffic problems, which got quite annoying.  On each of the floats, there would be monks, who would spray you with holy water.  By the end of the night, I had decided that they were playing a game called "Soak the Farang" because at every stop, the monks would spray me with water, and I was getting quite wet. 

 Here is another one of the floats.  You may be able to see the little monk in orange, but I'm not sure.  I just thought that this was a beautiful float, and you should have a picture of it.  On most of the floats, there were little strings that you could take, but only after donating a baht to the float.  My host mom collected strings at every float, and I started after a bit.  I collected 70 something strings, while my host mom was at 100 and something.  Lots of strings...which I have no idea what to do with. 

 This was quite an amazing float.  With its wooden structure, and shells.  The entire thing was covered in a variety of different shells...oyster shells, and a lot of shells that I have no idea what they were.  It was quite beautiful though.

My last thing of the evening was giving 20 baht to the nuns.  They were so cute:) Haha.  I asked if I could take their picture and they said yes.  You would stick your money on a paperclip and then stick it to the "tree."  It was quite cool.  I thought it was interesting that the nuns and the monks follow the same "traditions." They both shave their heads, and eyebrows, but I was allowed to give things to the nuns, unlike the monks. 

So that was the Cha-Prak Festival.  I wish I could give you some more "background" style information, but I didn't totally understand it....sorry about that. 

A Monk Holiday

One of the rules of being a monk, is that you can't touch women, or have really anything to do with women.  Now that sounds weird, so let me explain.  If you are a woman and you want to give the monk food, he can't take it directly from your hands...it either has to be placed somewhere where he can pick it up, or go through a third person who is male.  One of the holidays that we had involved us giving things to monks, and heres how we did it.

 I walked over to my grandma's house (her house is like 50 meters away, just like in Canada :)) and she had this tree tied to one of the support posts.  I was a little confused as to why it was there, but they soon showed me.  They had tried to explain it, but I didn't really follow, therefore I can't really tell you much about this holiday. 

 This is my host grandma sitting there with a plant.  The pink flowers would eventaully have 100 or 20 baht bills attached to them, and it would be given to the monks as a present.

 So heres what we did.  We would take the different things (soap, toothpaste, toothbrushes, tobacco...shampoo...)  lots of different things, and we would tie it to the tree.  My job was to tie it to the tree. 

Here is my host mom helping to put the things on the tree.  Our tree had quite a bit of stuff on it-ranging from food, to money, to bathing things.  It was quite interesting.  The next day at 5:00 am, the monks would come around and collect the articles off of the trees.  I made an honest attempt to get up to see it, but...I'm a teenager, and I learned that I like my sleep just a tad too much.  :)

Food!!

As many of you readers may know, I have had my fair share of strange things to eat.  Whether it is a bug, or just some food that I have never eaten before, I will be adventurous and attempt to eat it.  Though, some timesit ends with me drinking a lot of water so I can get rid of the taste/texture.  Pretty much all of the food that I have eaten is delicious! These are just a few of the dishes that I have eaten...and taken pictures of. 

 This was a very odd meal for me.  Earlier in the day I had been having a conversation with one of my friends about this particular .... shellfish? and she asked me what it tasted like.  I had to tell her that I had yet to eat it, but eventually I would.  This is the same Horshoe-type-crab that I have a picture of, earlier on in the Phuket trip.  You eat the eggs with papaya and some vegetables.  It was an odd meal for be because we were off at a restaurant, and then my host aunt showed up with it, and we just asked for a plate, and some papaya, and then we ate it...different...but it was pretty good.  Quite dry actually, but it was good once you ate it with the papaya and other vegetables. 

I'm sure that I have posted about this particular meal, though I can never remember the name of it.  It is something like Muang or something.  Normally when we eat it, we go out and get it but today, we happened to make it at home. 

Here is a picture of us eating it.  Yumm. 

There's not much to say about these three pictures, but I figured that I hadn't updated in a while, and it was time for me to do so.  :)