The King's Birthday

This past Wednesday was the King’s 80th birthday. Now if I haven’t mentioned it before, the King is kinda a big deal in Thailand. Thais wear yellow shirts every Monday (and any other day of the week) to pay respect to the King. His photo hangs in every home and business and you can actually face up to 7 years in prison for disparaging the King. So his 80th birthday celebration was going to be pretty big.

The people from my work called me on Wed morning and told me that they would pick me up at 6:00 to go into Santisuk (I’m about 8k away) for the festivities. When we got to the field, it was just starting to get dark. They had a big huge stage with a gigantic picture of the King.

People were just starting to arrive…the event actually started at 7:00 (why we had to get there at 6:00 I have no idea).

At 7:00, everyone gathered around the stage & different villages & schools presented these egg-shaped statues as gifts to the King.

You can see the statues lined up on either side of the photo under the writing.

That lasted about an hour or so. I had fun because we were standing next to a group of uniformed “cadets.” (I believe they are in a program like the ROTC in America). I could hear them talking among themselves & mixed in with the Thai were a few English words…which usually happens when people want to talk to me but can’t remember enough English to really ask anything. Usually the first question a Thai will ask is if I speak Thai. So instead of waiting for them to ask, I turned to the group and told them that I speak a little Thai (and then the lady I was with at the time told them that I could understand Thai really well if they spoke slowly…which was very nice to hear). They were very impressed & shouted out a few questions: “What is your name?” “How old are you?” “What did you eat with your rice?” the normal questions Thais ask. Apparently one of the “cadets” was the daughter of the woman I was with.

(The woman is one of the village council members & the head of the tea-making group).

When all of the villages had presented their gifts, the mayor of Santisuk made a speech & then they had a candlelight ceremony & sang songs (I recognized the King’s song & the National Anthem among the several that were sung).

That lasted about 30-40 min and then the show started. Different groups & schools prepared dances & shows for the event. They were all amazing & the costumes were stunning!

I haven’t yet mentioned the fireworks. They started lighting off big huge fountains during the dancing. Normally, I would be impressed, but they had these fountains “stationed” in the trees & about 10 ft from the crowd. You can’t tell from the picture, but the sparks were POURING into the trees & hitting people in the crowd. I am very surprised that they didn’t start a fire!

We left at 9:00 & as we were walking to the car they were lighting lanterns that then floated into the sky.

P.S. I'm sorry about the bad pictures. My camera takes crappy night pictures.