Yesterday, we went to the annual water buffalo and longboat races that were 10 minutes away from our house at Lake Mabpachan. I've never been to either and it was entertaining and educational. The water buffalo were paraded around the dirt field for a while with numbers painted on their sides, we assumed this might be the time to appraise the animals and make your bets? We couldn't understand a word the announcer said and had an awfully hard time finding anyone that spoke English to help us understand the whole process. After that it was quite exciting to watch the participants attempt to get their water buffaloes lined up at the starting line. 4 water buffaloes were lined topped with barefooted riders that rode bareback or should I say bare butted? Each rider had a long halter that was hooked in each water buffaloes nose and they guided the buffalo from way back at the end of the animal. It looked difficult even to this ole' rodeo girl. Half the entertainment was getting the animals lined up, there was lots of bucking off and resistance from the animals, sometimes after 10 minutes of trying to get all 4 of the racers in a reasonable straight line someone would shout 'Go!' and they would race to the end of the dirt field, we guesstimated it to be about 1/4 of a mile. There was only a thin ribbon separating the racers from the crowd of watchers, I felt it very important to stay alert just in case one of those water buffaloes decided to veer off the race course.
I'll also post some pictures of a few of the food stalls at the event and the monk directing traffic in the parking lot at the local Wat, I assume the event was some sort of fund raiser for the Buddhist Wat, it cost 20Baht to park at the event.
We also enjoyed watching the longboat races on the lake. The longboats were really long-imagine that?! Each boat was manned with 40 men, 2 teams raced at a time for about 1/2 mile perhaps. It was amazing to watch how each team worked together to propel this skinny, longboat across the water at a very rapid speed. I wish I could have understood their chants, each team had a chant that all 40 men yelled as they raced. It was quite a festive, spirited day of races in Thailand.
4 comments:
So, which food booth did you all per take from? Very interesting---and again really awesome on what all you all are getting to experience!!!
Love you all
Everybody's got a water buffalo..mine is fast, but yours is slow... Anyone else singing that with me?
Sounds like a very fun day!
How do you even learn about these things, since there is little to no English going on?
Hi guys-Lavon, we still have only ventured to eat one thing from a vendor on the street and that was ice cream which turned out to be such a treat, I just see how they wash their dishes and it's hard to make myself eat there. I do go to a local market and will get a cooked chicken there, because I know they sell a lot of them, haven't been setting for days and they have constant fly swatters going above them, I'll have to send pics of it. I have my fruit lady who is very nice and she now recognizes me and tries to take care of me.
Janette, this event was so close to our house and they had banners hanging over the street for a couple of weeks before hand, with the pictures and Songran's (our driver)help we were able to ascertain when and what was going on.
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