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.