Visakha Bucha Day

I arrived at school the other day and one of the teachers told me, "You should be wearing white."  As with Makha Bucha Day, students and teachers were going to the temple to celebrate the second Buddhist holiday of the year, Visakha Bucha Day.  Naturally, no one told me beforehand.  Then I was told, "We're going at 9:00.  We'll wait for you - meet us here."  I made sure I was 10 minutes early, knowing well how loosely Thais regard time and appointments.  I was completely unfazed to discover the entire building empty and everyone already gone.  Oh well.  I went back to the office and did some actual work.  When the teachers later asked me where I was, I joked that no one had waited for me and laughed it off as if it didn't matter.  Actually, it didn't matter.  But that was the Thai response - that's how they deal with situations.  As one Thai teacher told me once, "I don't like serious!"  Confrontation falls in the same category as punctuality and preparation: they just don't like it.

Because Visakha Bucha Day is a national holiday, that actually happened the week before.  I spent the day itself with a Thai friend, first going to Phibun Mangsahan, Thailand's easternmost city, with the hope of going for a swim in Mun River.  We're in the early stages of the rainy season and we've been getting a number of downpours, so the Mun River had risen to fast-flowing rapids.  We decided it was safer to remain dry - though it didn't stop these fishermen from getting their legs wet!

Instead we opted to eat the Chinese-style buns which Phibun is famous for.  The main specialty is this one on the left, which contains bamboo shoots, mushrooms, spicy sausage, and who knows what else.  The one on the right was filled with black bean paste.  Delicious!


My friend's dad was recently ordained into monkhood, so we paid a visit to his temple.  And made snow cones.  If you had told me a year ago that one day I would go to a Thai temple and make snow cones, I think I would have been justified in saying, "That's crazy!  You're crazy."  Now I would humbly take back those words and swear never to question you again.


You see, on holy Buddhist days, temples hand out free food, and my friend's mum was running a snow cone stand.  We were immediately recruited into helping out.  I was put in charge of the ice shaving machine, which was all great and dandy except that in typical Thai fashion it never occurred to anyone that I didn't know what to do.  So I had to figure it out through trial and error.

Thai-style snow cones start with bread.  No, I'm not kidding you.  A few pieces of bread are put in a small styrofoam tray, when doused with ice shavings.  That was where I came in.  The machine was a bit wasteful, spewing shavings all over my hand as well as in the tray.  It made for a very cold process.  The ice shavings are then drenched with bright, flavoured syrup and condensed milk.  Sounds sweet?  It's kind of disgusting, but they were really popular even with the adults.  We walked around to the other food stands offering the snow cones to anyone who wanted them.  One guy, after repeatedly failing at pronouncing my name, resorted to giving me a new one.  "Hamloo" or some such.  I don't know - I couldn't pronounce it.

We visited a couple more temples, including the floating Wat Ban Na Mueang, which was built on a small man-made lake.  It's quite beautiful, though for a lot of people the main attraction is the carp in the water.  You can buy pellets and stale bread to feed them, and if you go in the morning, the fish swarm in their hundreds after every scrap you throw at them.


At night we joined a procession to walk around Wat Mahawanaram three times, holding a candle, a lotus, and three burning incense sticks.  Three is the special number: one for Buddha, one for his teachings, and one for his disciples.  I wonder also if it is because Visakha Bucha Day celebrates Buddha's birth, enlightenment and passing away, which all miraculously fall on the same day.