Last weekend was the Flower Festival. Complete with a parade, beautiful floats covered in plant material, food, music, flowers on display, dancing. I hear there may have been an international beauty pageant, but I missed out on that. My favorite part of the floats had to be the rose carrots, they were amazing. Although I found an orange on one of the floats that still had a blue sticker on it. That I just found humorous. I also enjoyed watching people in traditional clothing. There are so many different kinds of people in Thailand, and the variations are beautiful.
It was the weekend before the last week of school, so unfortunately most of the weekend was spent on my computer writing final essays, working on my final lesson plan, and getting everything in order for my final portfolio. Not too interesting I am afraid. However, on Sunday afternoon I took a break to join some of the people at my guest house at the walking street. Saturday and Sunday’s the close off a major street and a few side streets from traffic, vendors of all kinds come out to sell their wares. Some are more commercially produced than others, but every time I go I see something new. We basically just ate our way to the end, I have to admit. Trying bits of things here and there and sharing with each other, it was a smorgasbord of
The strangest part of the street market happens about 6 pm. There are loud speakers all up and down the street were the market takes places, and on the side streets too. There always seems to be music, or some announcement in Thai taking place, that the entire market can here thanks to the sound system. But at 6 pm, everyone grows really still, despite how many people are waiting to be served, or how crowded the street is everything comes to a grinding halt, and gets very quite. It is time for the Thai national anthem, which everyone stands during, and many sing along. Every time it happens it is so surreal to be in such hustle and bustle, and the next moment being as still as possible. The moment it is over, the noise of the street market starts again, people talking, street musicians, the chaos begins again.
Once we had gone into just about every nook and cranny the street market had to offer, the three of us went to have foot massages. Now this is normally not my thing, and I totally gave into pier pressure from the massage school students that accompanied me. We had half hour massages sitting outside Tha Pae gate, watching the action at the street market. It was the one of the funniest experiences ever, we sat and laughed through the entire massage between what one of the massage therapists was saying (some things just had to be lost in translation), the faces the other was making, and the strange things that foreigners did when they walked by. Needless to say it wasn’t a relaxing experience, but fun none the less; even though my feet hurt for several days later.
Thai streetfood. I did pick up a small teak box from a non-profit organization meant to help people with disabilities. Many of the people who actually made the goods were their selling their items, which were so different than most things in the market.
