Thai time
Since 1940 Thailand changes year at the same time as the rest of the world. But not to the same year.
In Thailand we are living in the year 2548, departing from the year Buddha was born.
Volunteer story from Namsom
Our Namsom volunteers really love their little town.
They want more volunteers to go there, so they have written a Volunteer story to help promote it.
Baisee during Songkran
When many volunteers are leaving at the same time we often do a "Baisee"- ceremony for them. This, as we have explained in earlier letters, is a traditional Thai way of wishing good luck. There are two different sorts of ceremonies, one Hindu and one Thai. The Thai ceremony requires at least one, preferably three monks while the Hindu version can be presided over by a layman.
We made a ceremony in the Songkran week and since that is busy times for monks, for the first time, we made the Hindu version.
Songkran - Thai New Year 2548
The traditional Thai New Year is celebrated on the 13 of April. This is an overwhelming festival. For about a week, Thai people do nothing serious if they can help it. Throwing water, dancing and singing on the streets, parading and drinking.
We can't do any teaching during this week so we have no real alternative to just joining in the festivities. We hired a truck, put our buddhas on it, armed ourselves with water-guns, dressed in brightly colored skirts and joined the parade.
View the Festival picture gallery
Parading the Buddhas
But Songkran is also the day when all the Buddhas are taken out of their Wats and paraded around town. The main Buddha of Nongkhai (and the Isan region) who presides in Wat Po Chai
is the main event of the first Songkran day.
He is televised as he is taken out of the Wat and paraded three times around it, and he is greeted by the masses like a pop-star.
This Buddha was one of three that were shipped over from Laos and sunk in the river. One was recovered and sent to Bangkok, one is permanently lost, but this one emerged on it's own and is now a main attraction in Nongkhai.
T2T work shop at Grand Hotel…
On the monday before Songkran T2T we could not teach since the whole Songkran week is vacation time in Thailand.
So we gathered our volunteers at Grand Hotel in Nongkhai, to get ideas on how to improve our programs and how to promote them abroad.
A day in air-conditioned rooms and some group work by the swimming pool and we got a lot of new ideas.
The results of this day will, I'm sure be obvious to many soon.
Joe Finally leaves Travel to Teach
Joe came to join us for one, possibly two months last October. Then he prolonged his stay to incorporate December.
When Kerstin returned from Sweden in the end of January Joe was still around. And then he prolonged to take part in some camps in March. He could not leave the camps so he staid on until April. Now, nobody can want to leave Thailand just before Songkran. So the week after Songkran, Joe made this gratious Wai and left T2T.
Before he left he also had time to play a leading role in "The Lads", one of our Volunteer video diaries soon to be released on the Travel to Teach website.
Lady Boy Contest
Lady boys or Cattuis, as they area called here, are an institution in Thailand.
Many of the great festivals have "Lady boy beauty contests" on the menu. Now, as "farangs", we often get to make different kinds of celebrity appearances.
This year, two of our volunteers, Remko and Travis, were bestowed the honor of escorting the beauties on stage at this years contest during Songkran.
