Children's Day in Song Phi Nong

After all the effort of traveling around New Years, I have been wanting to stay closer to Suphan these next couple weekends and this last weekend was the second weekend in a row (3rd overall) that I stayed in Suphan. Nay, my friend/student, invited us to a small Children's Day celebration in her home town of Song Phi Nong (about 45 minutes from Suphan). Evidently Children's Day is a common thing here that many cities celebrate. So, Nay's dad picked Anna and I up (Eric was golfing with the Japanese teacher) Saturday morning and drove us to their home.

I was really looking forward to going to Nay's house since she lives in more of a country setting in a traditional Thai style house. This was the first time I actually went inside a Thai person's house and spent time in a traditional Thai neighborhood besides running or walking through one. Thai houses are often on stilts because of the flooding during the rainy season and are all wood like Nay's house. The whole living set up was interesting to me because it is pretty different from western style homes. In the US, homes with an awesome kitchen and well decorated living rooms are the pride and joy of a home maker, but a home's appearance doesn't seem like it is that big of a deal here. In Nay's house and her aunt's house next door, we walked up the stairs to find a very large almost empty room. It would be awesome if you were having a dance party or something, but there was almost zero furniture and a few pictures on the walls. I think it is because people don't really hang out inside their houses, especially if they live in an older house that does not have air conditioning. Most of the people in her neighborhood actually hung out outside and underneath their houses and that was where most of their furniture was. So I assume everything is moved inside during the rainy season and it looks a little more like a living area that I am used to.


Anyway, back to Children's Day. We walked over to the stage a few blocks from Nay's house where her neighborhood organized activities for the kids in the neighborhood/town. There were around 40 or 50 kids/toddlers/babies and the community bought a ton of treats and other prizes for the kids. They played games like the pop the balloon game (which was one of my favorites at my childhood birthday parties and which got very violent), musical chairs, throw the ball through the holes in Psy's sunglasses, mouth, or man parts, spinning wheel, dance to Gangnam Style, and karaoke. I swear I heard Gangnam Styles at least 5 times in a 3 hour period and all the kids (even 2 year olds) were dancing along. It disturbs me that the first english words most of these kids are probably going to know are "Heeeeeey sexy lady!" instead of "Hello, how are you?"

Pop the balloon

Musical Chairs

Dancing to Gangnam Style

Yup

This kid is as sick of Gangnam Style as me!

The kids were really cute and Nay's dad and the mayor got us on stage to lead a song and give out prizes. They really wanted us to sing a song, which we reluctantly agreed to do. However, we thought they meant lead a song so we had the kids sing the ABCs with us. We then figured out that they wanted us to be the ones to kick off the karaoke. Oops! We were also given some delicious coconut icecream with sticky rice (so good) and lots of fruit. Unfortunately Anna was handed a plate of deep fried hot dogs, fish balls, and other standard fried meats, but Nay intervened before we felt like we had to eat it.

After the festival we went back to Nay's where her mom and aunt cut up a Som-o (huge grapfruit like thing) and amazing ripe mango from their tree. Mangoes are really common here, but ripe mango is not. The taste of unripe mango is growing on me and I think of it as eating an apple, but ripe mango is sooo much better! They then took us to their neighbor's house where we were given some more crazy fruits and sticky rice cooked in coconut milk with mango to eat later (and omg it was amazing!). As if we weren't full enough, Nay's parents then took us out to an awesome lunch! Evidently Song Phi Nong is known for having good fish and it was amazing! We had 4 different fish dishes and they were all so good--fish balls (but good ones), green curry with fish balls, small fried fish and amazing steamed fish.

Before(ish)

After

By the time we got home we were exhausted and full of fruit and fish up to our eyeballs, so obviously is was nap time. The rest of the weekend was relatively uneventful and relaxing. Suphan is supposed to have a pretty big Children's Day festival when it comes around, so I am looking forward to that!