Thai Angels

During our stay in Thailand, the Buddhists celebrated the Candle Festival. We wrote a little about this before, about how we went to Ubon Ratchathani with Pi Kung and Chev to see the big parade itself. It was there that we were inundated by students asking to take pictures with us. However, the candle fesitival held many surprises for us.
Before the parade we spent the night in Pi'Kung's parents home just outside of Ubon (this is where we met Toto and Yoyo). Around 9:00 pm that night Pi'Kung's father asked us if we wanted to go to the temple with him. There we sat with a plate that had two candles on it, incense and lotus flowers. We listened to the monk chant and listened to the others in prayer. Then everyone, including the two of us, stood up and followed the monk outside. There we circled the temple three times each time chanting something different representing the three stages of Buddhist thought. Then we all removed our candle from the plate and put it down on this one tree and said a prayer. It was really a powerful experience, one that we will not soon forget.
However, before we even made it to Ubon our local village celebrated the Candle Festival. All the students spent all their free time preparing floats and practicing Thai dance for the event. There were about that 14 surrounding villages that also joined in the festivities. That morning (the Friday before the actual candle festival held on Monday in Ubon) we were very excited to watch the students perform and showed up at school quite early. It was there that the director of the English department, Pi' Noo told us that it was time to get ready. She put us in her car and told us that we would be dressing in traditional Thai costume and that we would be leading the entire parade. She dropped us off with the dress maker and said she would be back.
There we were with people who spoke very little English unsure of what was happening. Then a "lady boy", or a man dressed as a woman called Brigid over and she started to do her makeup. And by makeup, we mean clown makeup. Her face was painted white and thick brown eyebrows were drawn in with dark thick eyeliner. She wore the most unnatural shade of pink lipstick and then was sent to the back to put on bright spandex pink leotard and then she was wrapped in pink Thai silk to form a skirt. Meanwhile, when Brigid emerged from the back Brian was on the floor having his makeup done by the lady boy. It was the same as Brigid's pink lipstick and all. Then Brian was asked to put on a bright yellow leotard. The one thing that Brian wouldn't budge on was that he would not take off his boxer shorts and despite please from the people there he came out a vision in yellow spandex with boxer shorts hanging out the end. he was then also wrapped in Thai silk that was formed into pants that Brian later complained about a great deal of chaffing. If this was not enough both of us were then adorned with more costume jewelery then we had ever seen complete with a giant crown for Brigid that weighed her head down and felt like it was constantly pulling out her hair. Brian's hair was gelled and combed over (much to the delete of his father) and then he was also adorned with a crown. Finally Pi Noo came back and picked us up where it was a whole new adventure to try to get Brigid into the car as her crown was so high that she did not fit into the car. She literally had one lady boy grabbing her feet and then two others pushing her into the car.
Finally we made it to the start of the parade where we took hundreds of pictures with the students, teachers, directors and even the local government officials asked to take pictures with us. Then we were given a sign to hold and started to lead the parade. Two students were given the duty of following us with umbrellas to shade us as it was about 95 degrees out and we were in full spandex.
At the end of the parade we were seated with all the important members of the government on a leather couches (much o Brigid's dismay) and watched all the villages perform different Thai dances representing the challenge of devil versus good. The Thai dancing was actually quite good but after the 3rd hour with no drinks or anything we were certainly ready to call it a night.
When we left the school after our 6 weeks of teaching the presented us with a photo from that day with a caption that read, "Brigid and Brian, Thai angle and Buddhist Rent."
We promise to post the pictures as soon as we are able!