Tribal Fair

After taking the tenth graders hiking, camping, and all that other stuff, we stopped off at a fair held by and for the various mountain tribes of Thailand.

Everyone was dressed in their traditional tribal outfits.

We were able to rent traditional outfits for the day and wander around the fair grounds.

Many of the actually tribes people wanted to take pictures with the foreigner who dressed up in one of their outfits. The old lady on the left stopped just as we were about to take this picture with the 2 girls in the middle and so we had to invite her into the pic.

These two girls above saw me walking up the street and I heard them say "get the camera out and get a picture of that foreigner." While they were reaching for their camera, I walked up to them and waited for the question I knew was coming, "ถ่ายรูบด้วยกันได้มั้ย - Can we take a picture with you?"

We liked this girl's outfit and asked her to take a picture with us.

One of my tenth grade girls in her outfit.

Most of the boys didn't feel like dressing up. Chickens!

While at the fair we got to see or hear about some interesting things. One guy talked for ever about a certain type of snake he had in a box, but after listening to him for 15 minutes and never seeing the snake, we walked away. Instead, we went and saw this:

a lady with no body what-so-ever, just a head. Ask her questions and she responds, turns her head in both directions, but ain't got no body. Should have asked her to do the poltergeist head spin.

Wandering around the fair made for a good ending to a long but very fun weekend.

Little Women

Today, 5 of my 12th grade girls were in an English Skit competition in Nakhon Sawan, a province about 2 hours south of Phitsanulok. They decided on a very brief version of the play Little Women and were the third group to perform out of 32. I'm so glad we got to go early because waiting around all day would have been really boring.

 

 Here they are introducing themselves to the judges.

Mother reading a letter from father to the four girls.

 Finally, getting along after a lot of sibling rivalry.

Of course, I think the girls had more fun dressing up and taking pictures than they did performing the skit. They spent 10 minutes performing and another hour taking pictures.

And it wouldn't be a complete set of pictures without at least one with me in it.

We do not know yet how the girls did compared to the other schools, and if we won or even came close to winning, but we had a good time nonetheless.

Backwards

For all of you reading today's posts, please scroll to the bottom and start with the post titled Doi Pui or the Northern Hilltribe Village. Then scroll up and read Phuphing Palace, and finally Doi Suthep. Otherwise the adventure is out of order. I guess I should have started writing about the third stop first and worked my way backwards. Sorry for any confusion.

Doi Suthep

Our third stop on this trip was to Doi Suthep Temple.

Here I got to take pictures with a really big Buddha

A large shield

and a 4 headed dragon being eaten by a serpent.

Then, I was privileged to climb all 306 stairs to the top of the mountain to see the actual temple,

where I met some dancers,

was impressed by some interesting statues,

pounded on some drums,

and rang some bells for good luck.

Which didn't seem to work because shortly after...

I had my arm eaten by a crocodile.