My Old Blogs at Yahoo!360 / MTP
On this page : Funerals in Thailand Crazy Festivals
Entry for October 30, 2006 -- Funerals in Thailand
We went to my parents' old, old friend's funeral Saturday evening.
It was held in a Buddhist temple in Bangkok.
Let me explain a little bit...
Most of the Thais are Buddhists. Very few are Christians (here I mean Catholics, Protestants, Mormons, etc).
Muslims are few, too, but if you go down to the south, almost ALL of the people there are Muslims. There are problems in our deep south (3 provinces). Lots of killings and daily bombings. BUT we all know that the terrorists just use religion as an excuse. Muslims in other parts of Thailand do NOT have any problem with other Thais at all... They are peaceful and friendly!
Now back to the funeral talks...
That funeral was of a Buddhist style. Many Buddhists here think that when we die we go UP to heaven and we stop suffering. Therefore the atmosphere at a Buddhist funeral may not appear very sorrowful. This does not mean that we do not feel sad. We do.
At the temple, there are rituals to keep the survivors so busy that they have no time to cry. They have already done a lot of crying at home anyway. There are Buddhist monks chanting but I never understand what they chant. I was away from this country for too long and I still do not understand these things well.
This old friend of my parents' was a very successful overseas Taiwanese businessman therefore it was not surprising that there were lots of VIPs attending the funeral. I even saw wreaths from the President and the Vice President of the Republic of China (that is, Taiwan) !
It is interesting that when my husband took the first picture at that funeral using flash + zoom,
we got a picture that looked as if the air was full of smoke.
But there was NO smoke at all!
Either it was a technical failure at the moment, OR according to some people,
it was the way the soul of the deseased greeted us!!!
How nice of him!
We had not believed in that kind of the saying, but what a coincidence!
Other pics taken afterwards looked absolutely normal. When we got back home we tried taking pics using flash + zoom, but we saw no smoke in any pics!
The funeral at the temple is usually held for many days until cremation or burial. Most of the people attend only once.
One time I went to the one that had cremation. I saw many (exotic) rituals including tossing lots of coins to the air following by lots of children happily picking up those coins. I did not see the family cry their hearts out, which was rather strange to me. In other countries some family would HIRE someone to do special crying!
In another funeral, it was the "Gong-Tek" night, which had Chinese Buddhist monks chant in Tae-chiu dialect and they also did lots of acrobatic show! It was very noisy and lively. In between, the family had to walk, sit, stand, or kneel according to what they were told by the monks. I THINK (I am not so sure here) it was about sending the soul to heaven.
I have heard a lot about funerals in Islam but have never attended any.
I attended a Catholic funeral in Thailand just once. It was so exotic. They sang and chanted in a Chinese dialect! Most of the Catholics in Bangkok are of Chinese origin.
So much about funeral talks....
I feel myself so FOREIGN in this land.
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Entry for November 01, 2006 -- Festivals that we go CRAZY
I do not know how crazy people can be on Halloween's day
since I have never been in any Halloween celebrating country on this particular day
to witness the craziness with my own eyes.
However, judging from the atmosphere I got at Y360,
people could really be out of their usual way!
In Thailand we do not celebrate this except in department stores and restaurants. Nevertheless we do have national carried-away crazy moments similar to Halloween. This happens during our "Songkran" or water festival. It is our traditional New Year's Day, which happens during the hottest days in our summer (mid April).
Songkran has always been an important family reunion day and younger people are supposed to pay visits to older people, but this festival is best celebrated with water fun.
We were told that in the past, younger people would sprinkle perfumed water to the elders, asking for their blessings. These days, frankly, I don't see that at all except on TV.
What I often see is people enthusiastically splashing water on one another. Some kids even throw plastic bags of water or ice cubes to motorbikes and passengers on buses -- although these have already been banned because they are too harmful.
During Songkran we see people on the streets with plastic water guns of various sizes. Later on, pumps were added to these guns, making the shoots even more powerful. We usually see people equipped with such "weapons" assaulting one another with great fun. I heard that water guns with pumps were banned, too, because they proved to be too disastrous.
During the festival, streets are full of pick-up trucks with huge water containers and a load of merry-making people on each of them. When two trucks meet, water fighting immediately starts. When stopped by traffic lights, they get off their trucks and approach the strangers on another pick-up truck or motorbikes or on the sidewalks and use their wet and heavily powdered hands to stroke the strangers' cheeks. They do that to cars, too! It is not uncommon to see streaked faces and vehicles.
I have never participated in such crazy activities. Not even once. Neither have my parents who immigrated to Thailand more than half a century ago. At most, we would get in our car, securely lock the car windows and doors before we go out to observe the temporarily crazy Thais and foreigners on the streets.
The scene out there is always hilarious.
By the way, this country has never failed to get the highest national death toll during our Songkran festival.....
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