We crawl out of bed, managing to wake up fairly quickly and get out the door by around 8am. You can never tell when the parade will start – there is no established schedule that we’ve ever been able to obtain, and we know from past experiences it could be 8 or 9 or even 10 am before the first floats come our way. But, we want to be there and prepared, so we opt for an early, rather than a later start.
There are lots of people heading down Chan Klang toward Thae Pae road. We are planning to wait at our normal place on the south side of the street a little beyond the Wat, but when we arrive at the corner, it is already packed, and a lot of the food vendors have moved closer to the space we normally would occupy. As we are scoping out the area, we spy a whole bunch of chairs across the street. Hmmmm….well, what the heck, let’s go sit.. Turns out a very smart entrepreneur has set up about 30 plastic chairs and is selling seats for 50 baht. We’re all over that! The best 100 baht ($3 USD) we’ve ever spent!
Camping out in our chairs on the street corner, we watch the world go by, patiently – and quite comfortably – waiting for the parade to start. There is a slight brouhaha over the chairs when 2 European ladies sit down and refuse to pay the guy. I mean really, come on! It’s 50 lousy baht people – cough it up. The chair guy actually goes over to the traffic cup a few feet away to talk to him about it, and the ladies finally pay. But then they also get into a bargaining hassle with a street vendor over some toys – they want to pay 50 baht and the vendor wants 80 baht. She actually comes down to about 65 baht, and they still won’t pay that. Argh.
Finally, the parade begins, and just as in years past, all the tourists jump out in the middle of the street and impede the progress of the procession with their photo taking. Sigh. I guess it’s just a thing – but we still think it is totally rude.
And who are the biggest offenders? The non-bargaining, chair squatting Europeans. Also this one couple whose female partner had to have a picture with literally every single person in that parade. It was crazy! Good thing we had our seats, because this year, we just sat back and laughed. We were comfy and decided to watch the parade and be more in the moment, rather than making sure we were in a photo of the moment.
Sitting across the street also gave a great angle for the photos we did manage to snap, with the entrance to the Wat framing most of the shots. Nice!
There were floats with the late King, the one we particularly liked was on that had his image in painted rope. The detail was astonishing. And then a group carrying actual portraits of the King and Queen.
The floats were amazing, as usual. The detail and the work that goes into them are wonderful. we manage to snap a few photos around the worst parade impediments…
…until one lady actually gets hit by a float. Kid you not! She wouldn’t get out of the way because she had to have a picture and the float had to move on, and bam. The float jerked to a stop, almost throwing the girls riding on it off. One of the military police directing the floats yelled at the lady – and I mean yelled. Not like, “oh, are you alright?” More like “get out of the way moron!” Then he just stood there and glared at her. You go Parade-Man! Honestly! It got so comical, Ed decided to get into the act too. Well, a mimic of the action, rather than really blocking (or getting hit by) the float.
Back in the safety of our chairs we watched battalions of similarly dressed people marching by. None smiled, none looked happy, most were on their cell phones. Ed immediately dubbed them the “prisoners.” Boy did that fit!
There were some cute and interesting displays, like the rolling gong that had a little, teeny toddler straddling the front of the cart, looking like he was scared for his life; the guys in the wooden go carts being towed by a float; the Chinese dragon type costume with a deer head instead of a dragon – with the kids who wouldn’t put the head on, but walked holding it like it was a dead thing; and the peacock lady, who was stunning, but was followed by a group of fire breathers who almost caught the pushy tourists on fire when they got too close.
And then there were the hundreds of marching (well, walking) ladies in beautiful outfits, some escorted, some not.
And lots of marching bands as well. The pirate band, made up of five different schools, was so huge, it took up the entire width of the street. You can bet that had the photo freaks scattering. Actually, there were guards alongside the band shooing people off to the sidewalks.
On and on it went, but as in previous years, it was all hurky jerky. We could sit for 15 minutes without a single entry passing us by. Finally, after a little more than 3 hours, we gave it up and headed back to the condo for lunch. We ended up hitting the Big C convenience store for more lettuce, which is hydroponically grown and totally wild. We’ve never had hydroponic vegetables literally off the “vine” or whatever you call what they hang on to grow. This thing had the rootball and seeds and everything.
Later on, it was such a lovely night, we decided to go to River Market again. It was really busy and we had to sit at the bar to wait for a table, but that was lovely as well. The seats were right on the lawn facing the water and it was a completely pleasant way to spend the 15 or 20 minutes it took to get a table.
For dinner, we shared the Son-in-Law eggs, which are always delicious. Then I had coriander crusted tuna over what was advertised as a mango salad (but I say it was papaya, and excellent), and Ed had the fried snapper, which looked a lot better than what I had the first night, and I loved it that night! (PS – the tuna picture didn’t turn out, so no food porn on that dish tonight.)
Long day, nice night. Back to the condo we go for a good nights rest.
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