On December 5th, The King turned 83. Ongoing celebrations for the past week or so and ceremonies have ensued. Friday afternoon my small school of PlaPak Noi held a ceremony where they constructed a huge banner saying "Long Live the King" along with candles and ensense burning. After some buddhist prayers were said each student had to approach the King's picture and bow. It was a really sweet ceremony and shows even in the smallest, poorest parts of Thailand how much the people universally love and honor their king (its even against the law to speak poorly of him!). PlaPak Wit asked Amanda and I to perform a Thai dance at the festival that they were putting on. A little hesistant we agreed not knowing exactly what we were getting ourselves into. From wednesday to friday we met with the dance teacher from the high school to learn our routine. It is a fairly simple routine but we definitely lack the grace of a Thai dancer. At a very young age they start training to thai dance bending thier fingers backwards to look more elegant. Anyways the highschool team was already gearing up for their performance the same week so we went a little scant on our practice time and basically hoped for the best!
The day had arrived and around 1pm we started the very long process of getting ready. I was a little nervous on how they were going to handle my curly hair since they have probably never dealt with it before but they assured me all will be fine. First they started brushing out my curls which just made a huge fro and then backcombing it, basically turned into a giant frizzed knot... worried. Using lots of hairspray and bobby pins they created a bun with a lot of poof...I was impressed! From there make-up started where they literally put layers of white make-up on me, a thick foundation and powder. Next intense drawn in eyebrows, dramatic pink eyeshadow, and painted on red lips! I turned asian in an hour. when I finally got to peek at a mirror after they finished I didn't recognize myself. We had a little break, which is when we learned that we weren't dancing at PlaPak Wit but at the city pavilon and not only the whole village of PlaPak was going to be there but also the surrounding villages...grrrreat.
At 5pm we started to get dressed. They wrapped and pinned us up in traditional thai outfits complete with about 10lbs of silver sparkly jewelry. I even got a huge tiara to stick around my bun. We were definitely Thai'd at this point. About now I really wished we could just walk around in our outfits and say Hi to people and skip the whole dancing in front of 100s of people part.
Yes, I was wearing all that jewelry at once!
As soon as we arrived we became the local celebrities at the festivals. Photos were being snapped every few seconds and people ushing their children in and out to get photos with us. I'm pretty sure this will be the closest thing for me to be a celebrity. There was a candle lightening ceremony for the King and before you know if we were up on the stage. I'm pretty sure my mind went blank at this point and looked at Amanda shaking. There were several video cameras on us and flashes going off with everybody silent and looking. I made it through the performance which I barely remember now because I was so nervous (thank goodness for Amanda!) . Of course everybody was sure to tell us we did wonderfully even if it was terrible ahaha.
The stage we performed on
From there we took more pictures with important people, hung out with Amanda's PawAhh, and watched Thai boxing. I wasn't so keen on watching the boxing and my heart was clenching as I watched tiny 10 year old boys enter the ring but Thai's are allll about boxing. It was hard for me to watch but I tried to go along with it. I even got to go up to the ring and present the boxers with a flower lay before the fight began. We ended the night by saying multiple times to the PA that we were very very tired after being ushered around all night and needed to go sleep. Rambo, our police security guard, escorted us out of festival even pushing people out of the way to make sure they didn't touch us. To both Amanda and I this was a little much since the whole night we mainly wanted to go hang out with our students but too tired to deal with it we smiled and moved on. It took a good 15 minutes of scrubbing to get the make-up off and handfuls of conditioner to untangled the hair-sprayed knot but I would say it was worth it. That night I will always remember. Everyday I'm still amazed at the generosity of Thais and my village. Just being a foreigner is such a big deal here and they are the most welcoming people. I'm hoping to get the newspaper article about us and video recording that was put on Thai Tv!
Hee hee, I can imagine your 'worried' look as they combed out your hair. :) It is odd to just hand yourself over to someone, especially when you have serious doubts about their familiarity with the particulars of white folks or their desired results. How many times was I decorated into a gold clown of sorts, hair teased into a painful tower, that they found jaw-droppingly beautiful.
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