It has been a busy season with lots to do and no time for blogging. We finally published the first quarter newsletter for Kids Ark which took a lot more time than I thought it would. We are way behind blogging about our trip to Indonesia Dec 20-Jan 2 and that will follow but not until we are holed up in New Hampshire!
The Chiang Mai Flower Festival is in it's 35th year and have people coming from a long distance to both participate and watch. Of course lots of annoying tourists too! (like me)
Here is a video of some photos and some video of the parade and then floats once they were parked at the park in the south west corner of the old city.
In some ways it appears the floats and dancers etc have gotten a little "over produced" for my taste to make the event even better for the visitors (tourists). Also the sound systems are so big they need to trail a diesel generator to power it! Still there are the traditional music and drummer groups that are really fun to watch and listen. We (mainly Tom ) didn't have the patience to watch the 3-4 hr parade so we just waited until the parade ended at the park and went to see the floats there. That is quite a scene where there is lots of food vendors - a must for any Thai event - and then everything else under the sun too. Barbie dolls, flash drives, orchids, bike pumps and traditional goods too.
On Sunday most of the staff and volunteers from Kids Ark went to Mae Chaem west of Doi Intanon mountain for the annual Din Chok weaving festival. This annual event celebrates that style of weaving as well as other aspects / crafts of that region. This was a much more traditional and less touristy parade and event and I preferred it to the big city version. Lots of beautiful weaving. Not cheap (approx $ 50 for a nice skirt size piece) but when you consider the work that goes into that kind of weaving a bargain for sure.
Resa one of the employees of Kids Ark lives near there so we visited her village on the way back to Chiang Mai. She is from the Karen ethnic minority and is in charge if the handicraft production and quality control. Her village also has a trekking lodge for a tour company so we visited the lodge to compare it with the one that was done by the village we help too,
Here are some pictures of the trekking lodge
Finally it was also Chinese New Year and there was another Industrial promotion show going on too but we couldn't do everything! We leave Feb 26th so just two weeks left!
Tom and Bev Feb 10, 2011
2 comments:
The Thai people know how to have fun! Thanks for sharing it with us.
The Thai people sure know how to have fun! Thanks for sharing it with us.
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