Farang On Parade!!!

The title of this post is quite accurate as I do believe I was on parade this weekend. It's not what you might think and there is quite a story behind this little adventure. It all started on Thursday of last week. Thursday was a hellish day and for whatever reason, the day seemed to last forever. My head was in a fog and I was beat. I made it home (finally) and watched a movie, preparing for the weekend. But sure enough Friday came and with a rude awakening, I, while mentally prepared for a weekend had to go to school. Friday was long and tiresome as well. Fortunately Friday afternoon came and I left. After a run and a bite of dinner I was feeling refreshed and settled in for a very slow night of reading, writing and movies. Waking up in the morning, I was ready for the day and excited for my second guitar lesson. A quick phone call home and an even quicker shower and I headed off to the post office to drop off some letters. This is another story, which, of course I'll tell now. I've been trying to mail letters home for about 2 weeks now, but have gone to the post office five minutes after closing twice! I managed to do that again on Saturday, but it wasn't my fault. The post office had different hours since it was the Queen's Birthday weekend. Anyway, I made it to my guitar lesson and started playing. I'm learning classical guitar so we are starting with the basics and will work our way up to chords. I'm enjoying that and it's all in Thai, so it's helping with my language skills as well. Finally, more to the point, I go to the bus station (it'll all make sense soon) and I buy a bus ticket to Phrae. Phrae is about 2 hours from Lampang and is an absolutely beautiful city. I really had no idea what I was going to do there, but I had a long weekend (we had Monday off in honor of the Queen's Birthday) and had no plans. So, I quickly ran home, threw a few things in a bag and headed to catch my bus. With only moments to spare I climbed aboard and my tardiness was rewarded with a stellar position standing in the aisle. The ride was uneventful. Arriving in Phrae, I meander through town trying to find a place to stay. And do, at the Paradorn Hotel - their main advertisement was "absolutely clean" so I thought I'd check them out. Settled in, I headed out. Deciding to ditch the guide book for a good old fashioned wandering I headed towards the old city. Phrae, like many cities, is divided into an old and new city. The older city in this case is about 700 years old and was once surrounded by earthen walls. Those wall, or their remnants, still stand circling the city. Also seeing as Phrae was once the teak capital of Thailand (before the national logging ban on teak in 1989), there are many old and beautiful teak houses scattered through the old city. A walk around the inside of the wall is full of surprises as old houses, forests, beautiful temples and stupas are found scattered around mixed with the more modern houses, shops and, of course, motorcycle repair shops. I was rewarded with numerous views of temples standing out above the houses with their golden-topped stupas shining in the late afternoon sun. It was amazing. I love this town. I made my way back toward the center of the town and encountered a mass of humanity all dressed in yellow and blue (yellow being the color of the King and blue the color of the Queen). They were assembling to march to the stadium for the Mother's Day Parade (the Queen's Birthday is also Mother's Day). So, I found myself a nice spot along side the road and prepared to watch the Parade. The parade started and I found myself wondering why it seemed, I was the only one watching the parade. An hour later, after the whole town walked by, I realized that the whole town was the parade. There were really three parts to the parade; the school marching bands, the pictures of the King and Queen and people. The parade started slowly and as people walked by they would look my direction, but since the parade was just beginning there were still stragglers showing up and walking by. As the parade went on, more and more eyes would shift my way as the people walked on by. Most would simply curiously stare at me, occasionally the girls would wave or say "hello". In my desire to be friendly, I waved and said "hello" back. And that elicited squeals and giggles like you wouldn't imagine. From that point on, all the girls would look my way and any response on my part would send a giggle through the parade complete with squeals. At first it was entertaining and flattering, but as the parade went on (and it went on for about 45 minutes) it got old and I was about ready to leave. I do believe everyone in Phrae walked past me and every girl between the age of 12 and 32 looked and giggled. It was an experience needless to say. I was going to go to the stadium to see what happened there, but had about enough of the giggling and went to dinner. As I was walking around afterwards, the town was empty. There were very few people on the street and it was difficult to find a restaurant to eat dinner at. But I found one, ate and called it a night after a very interesting day. There is more to tell, but I will say farewell for now. Until next time...