Sawadee Pie Mie Jin

And Happy Chinese New Year to you too! The clacking sound of my keyboard, magnified about a million times is what I hear every morning now starting at about 5 am and continuing long into the night. The firecrackers seem to be on a string and they light them from the bottom up creating a hell of a racket and lots of smoke!

Chinese New Year has seemed to go on forever, even though it does not start officially until tomorrow. The epicenter is obviously in China Town or Yaowarat where I went yesterday. It seems like a combination of New Year, New York style, combined with Chinese superstition and Thai culture. It certainly makes for interesting people watching and/or anthropological study if you are so inclined.

Everything is decked out in red as you can see from the pictures and of course there is lot of smoke from the firecrackers. In addition, people are very conscience of auspicious events for the New Year and are having their fortune’s told ( even though I did not witness that),but I did see lots of scribes writing good fortune messages in calligraphy which I assume they will put up in their homes. They also buy lots of gifts. The gold shops seem to be having a field day, even though I do not really understand how they survive since they all look exactly the same, have the same merchandise and seem to have the same price depending on the price of gold that day (even though they obviously bought the gold long before)

As you can see, the wats are jammed with people lighting incense, holding it up high, and parading through the various buildings of the temple area and then leaving their incense in front of the Buddha. It is sort of reminiscent of the lulav and etrog ceremony.At every street corner people are pouring money into firey canisters to ease the path for their ancestors. It is surprising the whole street does not go up in flames as you can see the fire gets quite high in some of the cans.

Yesterday was just the prelude to the main festivities of the lunar New year so I may go back today to see the streets closed off, food stalls everywhere and of course the racket. Mai Mi ben ha. No sweat. I will just bring a good pair of walking shoes and ear plugs.