We Three Kings

In 1296 King Mengrai founded Chiang Mai in northern Thailand.  He worked with two other kings (I'm too lazy to look up their names right now) to design the city in its square/grid pattern that is seen within the city walls today.  There is a monument dedicated to these kings near where I am staying here in town, and yesterday there was a celebration there to honor their memory.  Unfortunately I could not quite figure out (language barrier) exactly what the festival was for. I asked my friends and as many people as possible and mostly all I got was "three king, very most important, dead here."  In the picture here you can see the monument with some Buddhists there in front, my friend Sak is the guy on the far right.



Ok so here is the interesting thing about this festival.  Lana people were celebrating along with Christians, Buddhists, Hindus, Animists, etc...  .  Again, with the language barrier it was so hard to tell what was up, but what I know for sure is different cultures were coming together in one place and spirit and it was a really beautiful thing.  Check out this video.  I'm pretty sure this is some sort of trance. She was swinging around from this white cloth for a REALLY long time, but I only caught the tail end of it.  Notice when she begins to fall down she is helped up and a bowl of flowers and oil is brought to her which she dips her hand in and then puts it on her head.  I'm going to get a hold of my favorite professor back at OU and see if she can give me information on this...

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Again same festival, but now a different culture or religious group.  I think Lana but still not sure...

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And finally....no idea about this one but, either way she's getting DOWN....

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And here are just a couple pics...the first is the REALLY long table where everyone was being fed....soups and curries and the like, and incredibly it was free.  The second is me, Sak, and Jeean...the flower I am holding was given to me by the guy who seemed to be directing everything....microphone and all, and he was definitely Hindu but Sak told me the flower was "luck from Buddha," so that was kind of interesting.