This post is a little belated, but its been a busy week with no new phonelines on the horizon for Mae Salab:(.
December 5th is Fathers Day in Thailand, being, as it is, The Kings Birthday. In tribute to The King, at the start of his 82nd year,the Chiang Mai Royal Flora Exhibition opened its gates for free for a period of 10 days from the beginning of the month.
Keen to afford the children at Stratton House as many opportunities to be involved with local culture and celebrations as possible we decided to take them to the Exhibition site on Saturday the 5th in order to join in paying respect and sending best wishes to His Majesty, The King.
The King has not been in the best of health of late; he actually left his Hospital bed in order to be able to address his people on this important day. Doing so he made a very welcome call for unity amongst the Thai population. He stated that his health and prosperity would be assured if his people could settle their differences and return the country to stability. Lets hope his words are heeded.
It was decreed some years ago that the colour Pink was an auspicious colour for ensuring the health and welfare of The King and there has been an apparent surge in the purchase of pink shirts of late as His majesty struggles with his health.
We left Stratton House at around 6pm, knowing that the fireworks display should start at around 8-8.30pm. There have apparently been fireworks every night and my friend Ally is fortunate enough to live close enough to view from her balcony at home. Maybe we should have asked to go there.
We hit the traffic queue for the event shortly after turning left of Hang Dong Road. And there we sat for quite sometime, inching forward, caught between wanting to open the windows to get some air and wanting to close them to keep out the stench of exhaust fumes threatening to choke us as we waited.
After what seemed like forever we eventually reached the traffic lights on the Canal Road, only to see the traffic being forced left to U turn into a virtually static queue. Celebration or not I had had enough, boiling up in a car full of aggitated kids frustrated at being cooped up. The only clear road was the right turn onto the Canal Road heading into Chiang Mai City , so that’s the way we took. I hadn’t given up totally. Meaning to find a spot to park up where we could still at least view the pyrotechnics I suddenly remembered the back roads that lead off the Canal Road round to the back of the Royal Flora and up to Wat Doi Kam; where I used to look out for the dogs when volunteering for Care For Dogs. Within a few minutes we were parked up near the side entrance to the exhibition.
The Royal flora is an impressive and beautifully landscaped and manicured site and on this night was host to thousands, filling every available viewing spot. There is a wonderful Temple building to the rear of the site and it was to the Temple ‘grounds’ that we headed. By this time the firework display had already begun and the skies were also filling with paper lanterns. It had been worth the hassle to get there. The children sat and watched the display for a while but soon bored of it when spotting the animal statues in one of the many garden areas. Once the display had finished we wandered around the site that I can imagine would be a wonderfully relaxing place to be when not so packed with partying folk.
There were rumours that it will eventually be turned into a public park…I hope so and look forward to it.
We can only hope that there is as bigger surge to address the realities of Thailands present problems.
We hope you enjoyed your day your Majesty; Long Live The King.
More photos(fullsize) please visit our photobucket album here.
Who knows, this New Year might just see me keeping this blog section more up to date. Thing is I’ve given myself so many new projects for the site that certain things in this one man show take time to catch up on. Good to report that the Guesthouse has been doing reasonably well considering the present world economics and local political turmoil that are affecting tourist numbers. Thanks to loyal regulars and some lovely newcomers we have been doing much better than expected.
Marching bands preceded a procession of hundreds of Monks and Novices and local school children carrying of a huge long orange robe, followed by a beautiful cart, also pulled by local schoolchildren.
The cart was carrying a special water bowl, brought all the way from Lamphun.
Following this, the long orange robe would be wrapped around the Pagoda at the end of this ceremony to ward of Bad Spirits in the coming year.
Don’t like to bang on but it amazes me when other countries go on about the ‘high risk’ of travelling to Thailand, and then I look around me at the thousands of fellow revellers, and I see no tensions, no drunken brawling, no heavy Police presence, ( they were there but keeping well out of the way and as relaxed and happy as the crowds).
