After a night with 70 students on summer camp in Sattahib, and a night out with the liveliest farang in the best club in Khorat, we arrived in Chaiyaphum on Friday afternoon. A quick tour of the town for Vic kicked off proceedings, including a snack of som tam and sweetcorn juice at the best veggie restaurant in Thailand (or at least I think so). The main event, and the reason for our trip here, is to witness a Thai wedding, that of P'Michael and P'Ae whom I know from teaching in Chaiyaphum and summer camps all over the place. This being my first Thai wedding I was pretty excited, and I was not disappointed.
The wedding started the evening before the ceremony with a party at the school. It was great to meet so many familiar faces: teachers, students, and family that I had not seen for a year at least. The party featured performances by students from the school — the Thai dancing was really good. It was very professional, easily competing with our Warwick Grand Thai Night (and the food was better!). Most people retired to bed after the show, ready for the 6am start the next morning, and I was pleased to do the same after partying (and avoiding arrest) until the early hours of the previous night in Khorat.
Despite being told that it was strictly farang time the next morning for the wedding, Vic and I rolled up just before 7am in perfect time for the start. The ceremony was in the biggest hotel in the town, and it looked like half the town had actually turned up. There were monks for the ceremony and we started chanting and taking the precepts as soon the proceedings began. The farang were looking a bit bored and disinterested after 10 minutes, but it was good to see farang joining in. The married couple offered each of the monks some things, including a bowl and other useful monk stuffs. Then the monks broke into the parittas chanting — I couldn't help smiling at the thought of the farang (and the Thais) sitting still for this super-long chant! Luckily for them we had to go pour water on the bride and groom halfway through, which somehow took the fun out of sitting there watching them practice the art of endurance! There was food and alcohol served almost as soon as the five precepts had been taken. Luangpor would be appalled that people's precepts didn't even make it to the door with them — there were large piles of them strewn about all over the floor. After speeches, dancing, singing and a burst of karaoke, there were a few of us vegetarians getting pretty 'hungry rice'. Dan, Pond, Vic and I headed to my favourite 'J' (veggie) place where we proceeded to order nearly every dish they had.
In the afternoon, after I had caught up the family, we met up with the farang again and set off to the nearest waterfall in the National Park. It was packed with Thais who were surprised (and probably disturbed) to see 10 farang get out of a car and start wallowing around in the water, jumping off rocks, and attempting to climb up the waterfall. It was great to cool off after an exciting day and an amazing end to my first Thai wedding experience.
The evening was spent chilling out with Nong Tan and her family whom I must thank deeply for taking care of us in Chaiyaphum. Just before midnight we boarded a bus for our next destination. Before I knew it, I was woken up in Ubon bus station!
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