Last night, my host family organized a Thai dance lesson with one of their neighbor named Ek.
The place where I got my lesson was a hut in his backyard. The ceiling is covered with colorful offerings for the monks. (I kinda want that at home, don't you want it to ?)
Before dancing, you need to prepare your body, stretch it. But in Thai dance, the most important part is your hands. And yes, Teacher Ek is helping me stretch my hand on this picture. He, first showed me how to stretch the hand backwards and I swear that his fingers could touch his forearm !
The curvier the hands, the prettier the dance.
As I watched T. EK dance, I thought it was going to be easy. Oh boy, it is not ! But, it is so pretty and gracious!
By the end of the lesson, I was happy to manage to do the steps with my feet even though my hands could not move like his.
The second tradition I've learned that night is about a celebration happening next Monday, it is called Loy Krathong festival.
Krathong is a Thai term which refers to a piece of banana trunk decorated with flowers, banana leaves, candles and incense sticks. The word Loy means to float in Thai language. When put together, those two terms simply mean floating banana trunk festival.
Why do Thai people want to float a krathong?
There are many stories regarding how the festival originated. One of the versions is that Thai people have long been closely involved with rivers for ages as Thailand is an agriculture based country. And to show respect to the river, basically the goddess of the river called Pra Mae Khongkha, Thai people decided to make a Krathong to ask for her forgiveness.
They also see it as a time to wave goodbye to misfortune, wash away sins of the past year, and make wishes for the coming year. As I love creative and manual work, I couldn't say to another lesson : How to create a Krathong. It is a very peaceful activity, and you can let your creativity run wild to make the best Krathong of the city.
Obviously, at the end of almost two hours of lessons I asked how much I needed to pay T. Ek but he did not want to be payed. That's how generous Thai people are, they are kind hearted people with a rich culture. So, I offered to teach him a little english, and he gladly accepted so we started with the basics "Hello, my name is .... my nickname is.... nice to meet you!".
Next week, I'll post picture of Loy Krathong festival. Stay tuned!