Songkran at Ancient City
By Richard Barrow 
Thursday 14th April, 2005 | 338 words | Category: Festivals, Songkran | 7 feedbacks »
I spent the majority of my time today at the Ancient City here in Samut Prakan. For the first time they were holding a major Songkran Celebration with lots of things to do for all the family. By now you should know that I love going to the Ancient City. I have been there literally hundreds of times. Sometimes by myself or with friends. But often as a tour guide for visitors to my school. I know the place inside out. But today was the first time I ever got stuck in a traffic jam inside this park. There were hundreds of cars. It was packed with families.
One of the aspects of the festival at the park was to show how Songkran is celebrated in different parts of the country. But also to reveal Thai culture. In the above picture, you can see someone bathing a Buddha image with the Sanphet Prasat Palace in the background.
This is showing the Rub Bua Festival, or lotus Throwing Festival which takes place in Samut Prakan in October. Basically, people are showing respect to the Buddha image by throwing lotuses onto the boat. I will be talking more about this later in the year.
This is a kind of water boxing competition. There are three rounds and the person who manages to stay on the most is the winner! The guy on the left is about to fall off!
This lady is making a wish just before she releases some fish into the water.
Here is some traditional Thai dancing from the north of Thailand.
The final picture is of a game of blindfold boxing! This is much the same as kick boxing though the two boxers are blindfolded!
I hope you enjoyed those pictures. There was enough to do and experience to keep me busy all day. If you are in Thailand at the moment then I suggest you pay Ancient City a visit. The festival continues until Saturday. The park is open from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.
Do you have any questions about Thailand? Maybe you are planning a holiday or just want to learn more about Thai culture. Have all of your questions answered for free at ThailandQA.com. These forums are part of the family friendly Paknam Web Network.
Tags: songkran
| « Day Three of the Water Fights! | The Water Fights Continue » |
7 comments
Rub Bua Festival, or lotus Throwing Festival was introduced by Thai-Mons in Phra Pradang District (Samut Prakan) nearly 200 years ago.
It began when Mons in Phra Pradang finished farming in April. One or two days before Kaow Phansa (rains retreat), the PPD Mons boated starting around 2-3 am from PPD to visit their families, relatives and friends (Thai-Mons) in Bang Plee District (Samut Prakan). They boaded via the Sam Roeng Canal.
In the afternoon after lunch, their families and friends in BPD asked them to pass hundreds of lotus to Buddah images and monks in PPD as a sign of respect. They collected lotuses from their farms and canals in BPD.
That's about the begining of Rub Bua Festival. This information was recorded by me in my thesis when I interviewed many elderly people in PPD around 11 years ago. At that time the elderly men were about 80s years old. Now the festival change its forms and ways to practicing as land in BPD was sold for home developers and real estate companies, so lotus disappeared.
I just got back to this blog. It changes to a tradition after Ook Phansar. I was so busy during the last 2 months in dealig with the international conference and many friends visited me here.
I think there are many things happend during October. First, monks can again travel and stay in other places outside temples (they can't during Kaew Phansa). Second, people just finished their farming (during the raining season). So from October, they are waiting for their rice to be producted and collected in March - April. At the same time it was after raining season and flowers esp lotuses were so beautiful. So people might just initailly want to celebrate all these togather.
Comment feed for this postLeave a comment
| « Day Three of the Water Fights! | The Water Fights Continue » |
