Wai Khru Ceremony

Today my grade three students held the Wai Khru ceremony, which gives respect and appreciation (wai is a respectful bow in Thai) to teachers (khru).  By participating in the ceremony, students thank their teachers for teaching them well in the past, and they hope to gain merit and good fortune for the future. 

Interestingly, there is no set date for the ceremony; each school sets their own date. Yet, Thursday is the best day of the week for the ceremony.  (I am happy that today is Thursday!)

The ceremony was beautiful with students speaking and presenting teachers with gorgeous flowers. These garlands are often used for making merit and for other ceremonies. The roses and jasmine smell incredible!

I'm feeling very loved and appreciated!

It's beginning to look a little like Christmas in Bangkok...

...but it doesn't feel much like Christmas yet.

Maybe it's the palm trees and tropical foliage. Maybe it's the warm sunny weather. Maybe it's because I finished most of my Christmas shopping in early November. Whatever it is, I haven't been able to channel the holiday and Christmas spirit/nostalgia/energy that I usually can conjure effortlessly.

Then, yesterday was art and drama day at school, including a preview of the Christmas concert. 

So I thought maybe it was time to start listening to Christmas music...and then Songza shut down twice as I tried to listen to a new Christmas station. Bah humbug. 

Then as I observed lots of Christmas decorations on our way downtown, I thought that maybe it's not about Bangkok; it's my associations...

I associate the start of the Christmas season with shopping, shivering in cold temperatures, finding and decorating  a ridiculously tall tree, and enjoying delicious hot beverages. Really it's about anticipation, family, friends, and love, and I have all of that.  

Thanks to Skype and FaceTime I'm incredibly connected to the people most important to me who aren't in Thailand. I've also made great new friends here--we hosted the Thai-edition of Friends Thanksgiving last weekend.

I'm also spoiled because my sister and new brother-in-law are going to travel here for Christmas and New Years!

Finally, I've got this guy who surprised me a few weeks ago with our second Charlie Brown Christmas tree in a decade. 

So it's time for me to adopt new holiday traditions...like picking flowers from the tree over our driveway to put on our tiny tree, the Santa Run in a few days (we'll see how running a 5K in a Santa jacket and hat goes in 85 degree weather), and packing for Christmas on the beach in Phuket!

At the same time, I'm ready to reinstitute some other holiday traditions.  Cue the Christmas music that may play from now until the 25th. 

Happy Holiday Season to All!

Festivals and Wishes

November 17th was the Loi Krathong festival, which revolves around water and happens on the full moon of the 11th month. So we made dinner reservations at a great Thai restaurant on one of the lakes in Sammakorn (our mooban, or village).  Our landlord and neighbor had taken us to this restaurant, as it's owned by his wife's family, and he kindly called to reserve one of the best tables for us.  

Thai people honor the spirits of the water on Loi Krathong. I learned about the festival from Wikipedia and from my 3rd grade students who were making krathongs in Thai class in the week before the festival. 

A krathong is a floating water offering made of stale bread (which can be dyed or wrapped in banana leaves) that usually has a candle, incense, and flowers.  Neil and I picked out a krathong.

Earlier in the week, I tried to persuade one of my students to make me a krathong, but then I found out that it is bad luck (for Thais there are many sources of bad luck or bad karma) if only one member of a couple makes the krathong--I imagine it is even worse luck if you have someone else's child make it for you.

When you release your krathong you make a wish for the next year.

And the fish enjoy the extra bread :)

The Loi Krathong festival coincides with another northern Thai festival, Yee Peng.

Thai people tend to be very inclusive when it comes to religious beliefs.  Thailand is a country, which is 95% Buddhist and yet also embraces other spiritual beliefs and practices that are not related to Buddhism, such as spirit houses.

Tangent:

Spirit houses are often found in private homes and are also located in places of business.  People make daily offerings of flowers, food, and incense to please the spirits of that home or business. Additionally, Thais who are Catholic sometimes have a spirit house dedicated to the Virgin Mary with her statue.  Instead of drawing lines between religions and beliefs, Thais often connect them instead. 

This is all to say that, despite the fact that we are in the south of mainland Thailand, residents of our neighborhood were also celebrating Yee Peng.  Though compared to Chaing Mai, and other areas in the North, our local celebration was quite small. 

Throughout dinner we watched lanterns float up in the sky from the other side of the lake, from other lakes a few kilometers away, and from the restaurant's dock.  This adorable family released a lantern that hadn't burned for quite long enough yet, and it floated into the lake instead of over it. On second attempt, their lantern launched successfully. 

The sky was also punctuated with fireworks from near and far, and we saw lanterns with fireworks attached. They looked like jellyfish floating through the sky.  We opted for the basic lantern model.  With patience and a few close calls from the wind, we released our lantern which floated over the lake and past our neighborhood, carrying with it our wishes for next year.

Running a Race Thirteen Degrees above the Equator

Signing up for a race when I live just thirteen degrees above the equator might not have been the smartest idea, but I figured that a 10K wouldn't (or shouldn't) kill me. Luckily I had lots of great company during my training, as ten of my colleagues registered for the 10K, half marathon (I wasn't feeling that crazy), and marathon (borderline insane).

For me the training was easy, two to three runs a week usually 7-8K, which is the distance from school to our house via "backstreets".  The marshy land in our area doesn't lend itself to actual back roads, but it is traversed by a network of khlongs, or canals, which have elevated sidewalks that function as roads for scooters and as a running path for me.  (Side note: I shared in an earlier post, that I nearly drove a bicycle off an elevated sidewalk and into flooded rubber plantation fields. Therefore, I am certain that if I tried to drive our scooter on the khlong path that both the scooter and I would be in the water.)

Running with friends and running a one way route (I couldn't cut a run short when the route was linear instead of a loop...I simply wouldn't have be home yet) was great for me.  I also got to observe the khlong community, which is mostly Muslim, and exists in parallel to my school and community. I also got to see many more animals that otherwise I would not encounter.  Farms that are tiny by American standards had goats, chickens, ducks, cows, and water buffalo (which were sometimes being herded to a grazing area or wading in the khlong).  There were also herons and, on occasion, monitor lizards. 

This small monitor lizard staked claim to the path for a few minutes before finally jumping into the water and letting us pass.

On the weekend of the race, we stayed downtown near the start line. This was especially important for those who we're running the full and half marathons as their races started at 2am and 4am respectively. 

The race started and ended outside the walls of the Thai royal family's Grand Palace.

The 10K started at 6am and was crowded from start to finish (even more crowded than Philly's Broad Street Run as the course was more narrow and there was no staggering at the start--everyone running (or walking) the 10K and 5K started (or tried to start) simultaneously).  

My friend, Darcy, and I started the race together assuming we wouldn't find our other friends among the tens of thousands of runners. We were pleasantly surprised when we found Karli and Amy about 2K into the race!

Running a new route, through a part of Bangkok I haven't explored yet was great. Some sights were familiar, such as monks walking barefoot to collect food from Thai Buddhists who are making daily merit offerings to the monks.

Other sights were new and reminded me that I still have lots to explore in this City of Angels [Bangkok's official name is the longest name of a city--continue reading--The city of angels, the great city, the residence of the Emerald Buddha, the impregnable city (of Ayutthaya) of God Indra, the grand capital of the world endowed with nine precious gems, the happy city, abounding in an enormous Royal Palace that resembles the heavenly abode where reigns the reincarnated god, a city given by Indra and built by Vishnukarn.]. 

This was the pretty view I enjoyed as we approached the finish, back outside the Grand Palace. 

At the end of the race we were rewarded with our choice of a fish or pork burger from the ubiquitous McDonalds, where Ronald McDonald wais, or acknowledges you with a bow, outside every location.

Yes. I do sweat that much now that I live in a tropical climate. Note to self: put black running shorts on my Christmas list. 

I skipped the pork burger, saving room for the New York style brunch we had planned for after the race.  The avocado toast and steak and eggs with asparagus at TriBeCa Restobar were worth the wait.

Exploring Bangkok...looking for what lies beyond Sammakorn and Sukhumvit

A few Saturdays ago I decided I wanted to be a tourist (and drag Neil along with me), so I found a half day bicycle tour and signed us up.  I made two rookie mistakes--I signed us up in advance for non-refundable tickets (it's rainy season, and it rained a lot that day--despite the fact that it has hardly rained for the previous two weeks), and I didn't read any online views of Bangkok's spiceroads.com. (If there aren't critical reviews online yet, there will be in a few days...failing to have an allen wrench means you've earned a harsh review).  

Embracing the rain (in our ponchos) and ignoring the ill-prepared state of our tour guides, we set out to have a great time anyways, and we did. 

From crowded, traffic-clogged Sukhumvit, we rode to the Chao Phraya River in under ten minutes. Next our bikes were loaded on a long boat, and we were ferried across to Bangkra. No bridges span the river in this area, so long boats are the only option, at the bargin price of 10 baht ($0.35). Bangkra is a different province than Bangkok, essentially making it a suburb. A suburb that is intentionally less developed, with much of the land controlled and preserved by the government. 

This map illustrates why Bangkra is described as Bangkok's "green lung". 

The area used to have many small fruit plantations, and we saw some coconut plantations still in operation.  There are few streets on this island that feels like a peninsula.  So we rode on elevated sidewalks over the khlongs and marshy fields.

This photo is from the tour website, as I didn't stop to take photos because I was busy trying not to fall off the elevated sidewalk, especially on the 90 degree turns.

We stopped at a simple wat, or temple, with beautiful Buddhas and wall paintings. 

Stupas--family tombs where one part of a family member's cremated ashes are honored.  Part of the remaining ashes are scattered, usually in the river or other body of water, and a third part are honored in the family home.

Offerings of flowers, food, and incense are made daily in temples, at stupas, and spirit houses.

Later on our ride we passed pristine, modern, glittering temples which stand in stark contrast to the humble wat we passed earlier. 

Then we went to the local market for a delicious smorgasbord of a lunch (and some thorough (and free) first aid for my clumsy scrapes).

Mmm, fried banana, grilled banana, and mini-pineapple.

As the rain slowed on our return, we enjoyed a slice of the glass, metal, and concrete skyline of Bangkok from verdant Bangkra.

Despite the rain, scrapes, absence of Allen wrenches, and poorly fitted bikes, it was a great day in a new part of this city packed with contrasting truths.