February 9, 2024
Chinese New Year's Eve in Surat Thani
Enter: The Year of the Dragon
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Chinese New Year's Eve in Surat Thani
I've always had a hard time predicting what will happen on Chinese New Year's Eve. Many times I've positioned myself in a city in Asia where a lot of Chinese live and I've tried to figure it all out and every time I come away more confused. It's much more straightforward in America: go to a party, get drunk, kiss someone at midnight and there are a bunch of fireworks. Done.
When I was in Penang in 1979 the Chinese New Year's celebration came the closest to this scenario. I had made friends with a couple of Aussie blokes and all of us being twenty-five years old we did what twenty-five year old guys do, we went to a bar. We were all very poor so we sat there nursing our lone beers. Suddenly a bottle of Cognac was placed on our table. We told the waiter that it must be a mistake but he pointed to a well-dressed Chinese businessman across the room. He wanted us to celebrate with more than a beer. Since we were twenty-five year olds we of course drank the entire bottle whereupon a second bottle was placed on our table. The same man across the room smiled and motioned that it was nothing and that we should have a good time. Amazed at our good fortune we toasted him and drank up. That was an insane night and there were fireworks for sure because back at my hotel room I was pretty sure the place was going to burn down.
[By the way, I remember that those bottles of Cognac were $160 each! In today's dollars that would be $676 each! Imagine someone so rich to be able to do such a thing for some strangers in a bar. Foreigner hippies no less! The man never came over to shake our hands or say one word.]
Andrea and I stayed three days in Ranong in 2015 waiting to see what was going to happen and absolutely nothing happened. We were in Bangkok a year ago during Chinese New Year's Eve. Bangkok was pretty lively and we watched fireworks at midnight from our balcony, the biggest display being behind our hotel but we watched the fireworks in the window reflections of a tall building.
Now we wanted to see what Surat Thani had in store.
We woke to the bangs of thousands of firecrackers down below our window on the street. Again down the street always in batches of thousands at once. This is to scare off Nian, the beast who comes to loot livestock and homes. Nian also doesn't like the color red which is why red lanterns are hung in front of houses and temples and even across streets. This went on periodically throughout the day as we walked around. Nothing much was open but we did find an office supply/stationery store open. We knew we would need two or three rolls of clear wide tape if we were going to be making boxes for our bikes in Bangkok and easier to buy them here, now. I also found the little tiny notebooks that I love. They are a certain, exact kind of little Thai notebook, mind you. I have had one in my back pocket for twenty-five years to make notes in and yes, I have an archive of at least twenty of them that are full of notes. It's always a good day when I find more of them because they are kind of rare. And, yes, I have more than a lifetime supply of them already but I think they are interesting. There are different covers on them each year. Each year a new edition of about six of them.
Then, still wading through blasts of firecrackers, thousands at a time on the street in front of houses, we noticed that a decrepit mall was open. Andrea had a 100 Baht credit on her Thai data plan which she wanted to obtain so she would have data for the rest of our time in Thailand. There were two women who thought they could do it in place of the person who normally worked at the phone kiosk. They called the company headquarters and they talked the two women through the process. I was impressed how enthusiastic the two were since I was pretty sure they had never done it before. For some reason a new SIM card had to be placed in Andrea's phone and in the end the 100 Baht credit had turned into us giving them 200 Baht more. Funny how things always work that way.
While they were doing that I was sucked into the adjacent underwear section. I thought the woman salesperson would be too embarrassed to deal with me, especially since I was holding up a pair against myself and asking her if she thought they were big enough. Unflustered, she found the sizing in terms of American waist sizes and how they corresponded. Brilliant. I figure she must have been being paid on commission to be so professional about the whole thing, that and the fact that no one else was buying underwear on New Year's Eve. I ended up buying a three pair package and we were both thrilled.
It's funny no one was buying underwear though because the Chinese believe in removing the bad and old and welcoming the new and good for the New Year. They also get rid of dirt and any unwanted items. All of this applied to the underwear I was wearing at the time. This also goes along with the cleaning I saw the night before. Lots of people were scrubbing their iron gate things that they roll down to seal off the front of their businesses when they are not open. Lots of scrubbing went on and then they were placing a large, red, Chinese character - the character for Luck - above their door.
Then, I brought Andrea to the cha yen maker wondering how she would react meeting the "wife" who drank my cha yen the day before. Because she was Thai I knew there would be laughter. And there was. She said, "Wife?" and I nodded while rolling my eyes and then ordered TWO cha yens. She laughed. It was all good fun in a very Thai way. Light, simple, juvenile even, but very Thai and always a great way to interact.
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As we walked around we saw that people had brought out miniature burn barrels into the pretty much deserted streets in front of their homes and they were burning fake money and large sheets of paper with gold and silver bars printed on them. The burning of such things is to pass riches on to ancestors. At the same time of the burning all the feast dinner food is placed on the table inside and it too is meant as an offering for the ancestors. I saw one beautiful spread of amazing food spread out on the ground in the doorway of a house as the family had quite a fire going in a large barrel a few feet away. As soon as all the paper is burned the food that had been an offering to the ancestors is eaten by the family. The family feast can take place on New Year's Day as well.
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I had been staying at a small Chinese hotel in Penang in 1979 for two weeks and because I had been there so long, the owners invited me to the family feast. I felt lucky and honored. It was quite an array of good food and I'll never forget how good the duck was.
On our walk we passed Chinese temples and I was surprised there were not great mobs of people in them. It was very mellow with a few people at a time lighting incense, also to pay their respects to ancestors. Offerings of oranges were in bowls too.
It was hard to find a restaurant open for dinner. We did find a very Thai place open and we were able to eat but the food was pretty mediocre. But we celebrated New Year by sharing a big bottle of Chang beer with a bucket of ice cubes. We went back to our hotel room and waited for what we were certain would be a barrage of fireworks all night but there was nothing. Nothing at all! I don't understand. Maybe the mayor said there shouldn't be any fireworks because last year several homes burned down. Who knows. It was fine with us since we were just going to be in our room anyway. But it pretty much made our decision for us, that we would ride to Phunphin the next day, first day of the year, and stay in Queen Hotel near the train station. We figured that if there were no big time celebrations with fireworks on the Eve there probably wouldn't be anything going on in Surat Thani for New Year's Day either. At any rate, the new year was to be the Year of the Dragon and the Dragon is the symbol of good fortune. All seemed well with our new plan then. Bring on the Dragon.
lovebruce
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10 months ago
9 months ago
(I'm assuming sleep was all he wanted to do.) This IS a nice website, so I too tend to censor some of my escapades, but I'm not sure I'd be able to resist telling a story like that. I figure I could always plead a case of youthful exuberance. "Hey, that was decades ago. Give me a break."
9 months ago
9 months ago