All Thai'ed Up: Candle Festival and Long Weekend Adventures

This past weekend was a four-day weekend in light of the Candle Festival—a festival that marks the beginning of what is essentially Buddhist lent, when all monks stay in their temples for three months. It also officially marks the beginning of the rainy season. Ubon is known for the candle festival it puts on, with events going on both Thursday evening and all day Friday (thus the long weekend).

My Candle Festival activities began about two weeks ago, when I went to one of the temples to see people actually making one of the candles (see pictures). Traditionally, people offered candles to the monks to provide them with light during their 3-month retreat from society. Today, the candles are a tad bigger than they used to be, and thus are primarily made of metal framing and paper mache, with only the outer layer being wax. Like the temples they come from, these candles are incredibly detailed, every inch of their surfaces covered in intricate hand-carved designs. Each candle tells a story as well. Luckily, when I went to see the finished candles the night before the big parade, I had a Thai friend with me who was much more knowledgeable about the candles’ stories than I was. It was great to receive some insight into what I was looking at.

Before...

After!

One of the candles being constructed two weeks before the festival at one of the big temples in town.

Same candle, this time all done and out on the street for all to see on the night before the parade

We couldn't figure out what this creature was...any thoughts?

Some candles were a dark orange, and others a much lighter yellow. Not sure why

At the parade on Friday morning

Thai dancers on one of the music floats

Dancers from the school I teach at...I was so proud!

The parade itself on Friday morning was quite a spectacle, but after a while of standing around in the heat, it became clear that once you’ve seen one gigantic candle and ensuing group of dancers, you’ve pretty much seen them all. Especially when they’re moving at a laboriously slow pace, and often not moving at all. The more I watched, the more I felt bad for those who were actually in the parade—they seemed to be melting in the heat right along with their makeup. I enjoyed the festival for what it was, but the true highlights of my long weekend were in the following days, out on the boarder of Laos in and around a city called Khong Chiam.

On Friday afternoon, I went with a few coworkers and some other people to one of my student’s family-owned hotels in Khong Chiam, east of Ubon. The hotel is right on the water where the Mun River flows into the Mekong River; this point is appropriately called the “two-color river” because when the two rivers flow into each other you can see their slightly different shades of brown mixing together. It was pretty cool to see this out on a little tour boat, but by far what I loved most about this excursion to Khong Chiam was simply sitting out on the deck of the hotel, watching the fishermen who occupy the Y that the rivers make.

Boat from which we saw the two-color river

Can you see the different colors?

The tranquil, untroubled work of the fishermen was in sharp contrast to the Candle parade I had watched earlier in the day. The first bordered on gaudy and was hot, stuffy, crowded, noisy, and ultimately not a true representation of real life. I mean, the candles aren’t even candles anymore—they’re just the skeletons of candles, inflated to be larger-than-life size and made much for the purpose of competing with other temples’ candles for first prize in the parade. Talk about straying from original intent... Watching the fishermen was markedly different. There was no show, no costumes, no spectators, but I enjoyed watching it so much more. It was incredibly peaceful to watch the fishermen at work, paddling and motoring their long, narrow boats through the wide, slow-moving rivers, following their nets hand over hand, and carefully and skillfully bringing up fish that had become entangled. I watched them as the sun set, through twilight, and into the night. The night fishermen were perhaps my favorite to watch, not because I could see what they were doing (I couldn’t), but because they reminded me so much of fireflies, their head lamps slowly bobbing and seeming to blink on and off with the turn of their heads. I could have watched them forever.

Fishermen on the two-color river, where the Mun meets the Mekong

I returned to Khong Chiam on the last day of my long weekend with a friend to visit a Soi Sawan Waterfall and Pha Taem national park. After spending nearly all of the last three months in a city, it was so refreshing to visit some of the beautiful natural attractions in Ubon province. The waterfall was absolutely gorgeous, and fell into a huge collection of potholes fit for swimming, jumping, and exploring. After relaxing in the cool water and receiving a few waterfall massages, we ventured to Pha Taem national park, which has prehistoric rock paintings that are around 3000 years old. The main area of the park is a large plateau of bedrock, from the edge of which you can look out over Laos. After admiring the view of Laos and the Mekong, we followed a long, thin trail down along a cliff face to see the paintings, made of red paint and still very much intact. Just as beautiful and interesting as the paintings were the cliffs on which they were painted—the beautiful curves and colors of the bedrock reminded me of some places I’ve visited in Arizona. I definitely plan on returning to this park for a camping trip during the dry season, because other than having ancient rock paintings, it is also the location of the first sunrise in Thailand, which I am sure will be quite a sight to behold.