songkhran

songkhran

April 5th 2016

Published by Owen Jones on 5 April 2016
April 5th 2016

April 5th 2016

April 5th, 2016

April 5th is important to many people in the UK because it is the start of the new tax year. I and millions of other Brits had to devote hours this week every year in order to get our taxes out of the way.

Then I moved here to Thailand and that all stopped for me, because I was not earning in the UK or resident there. To be honest, I wasn’t earning much anywhere, but I had assets and the cost of living in rural Thailand is low compared with Thai cities and especially the West, although it is rising quickly and has been for a few years.

This week of April 5th is important to Thais in general, because it will be Songkhran in nine days and people have already started to come back for the Thais’ favourite annual festival, the old New Year (before they fell into line with the West and adopted January 1st). I have greeted four Thais returning from abroad already today.

It is the best time of the year to be in Thailand without a shadow of a doubt.

Then there is my on personal reason for liking today. On the night of the 4th April, four years ago, I sent the manuscript of my first novel to Kindle and CreateSpace and told my family.

It was Daddy’s Hobby, the first in the series Behind The Smile and it had taken me five years of anguish and self-doubt to write. It was approved the next day; I ordered five copies and so did a few others – my family, presumably.

It was a very happy day for me and the beginning of a new career.

Funny old life, isn’t it?

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All the best,

Owen

Podcast: April 5th, 2016

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Observations From Thailand

Published by Owen Jones on 4 April 2016
Observations From Thailand

Observations From Thailand

Observations From Thailand

Today’s piece is more a series of observations, a sort of diary entry, I suppose.

The first of the observations will be obvious to anyone in Thailand at the moment and that is the heat. The months of March and April are Thailand’s hottest. Even the schools have to shut down. It was 39c at 16:30 today, with a note on the meteorological site that it felt like 44c

I can confirm that it did too.

Still, Songkhran, the ancient Thai New Year, starts on the 14th and the welcome, cooling monsoon should arrive within a month of that, although it has been a month late before now, which is blamed on climate change.

The second of my observations concerns embarrassment. Mild embarrassment of the kind one feels on coming face to face with a stranger unexpectedly. In Thailand, many people will just look straight through you. However, men may nod; older women may smile and younger women may giggle, but none of them (in the villages) do what most Brits would do, which is say ‘Hello’.

They just don’t have the word.

The third of my observations is to do with the meaning of the word ‘paranormal’. I looked it up last night and as far as I remember the definition was: ‘Something not satisfactorily explained by science’. One source offered examples such as telepathy and clairvoyance.

OK, that will do for me.

So, what bothers me is authors labelling their books on vampires, zombies and the like ‘paranormal’. Are they saying that they believe in these creatures? Because if the accept that they don’t exist, then they cannot honestly label their stories as paranormal.

It is just a nagging thought at the moment, but it won’t go away.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not denigrating the stories! I have written a vampire story myself; I am only criticising the sloppy labelling, the nomenclature.

What do you think?

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All the best,

Owen

Podcast: Observations from Thailand

 

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Khao Chae – Thailand’s Special Dish for Songkhran

Published by Owen Jones on 11 December 2014 6
Khao Chae - Thailand's Special Dish for Songkhran

Khao Chae – Thailand’s Special Dish for Songkhran

Khao Chae – Thailand’s Special Dish for Songkhran

Songkhran is the old Thai New Year. It is a special time of the year for Thais, which is often trivialised by Westerners, calling it such things as a ‘Water Festival’. Describing Songkhran as a water festival is like calling Christmas a festival of wrapping paper. Do a search on Songkhran, and you will see how many silly writers have got it wrong.

The fact is that March and April are the hottest months of the year in Thailand, also called the Land of Smiles, so in long ago days, water at this time of the year was at a premium. Therefore, praying for rain, and throwing a little of the water you have over people you like, was wishing them good luck with their harvest, much of which was rice.

Songkhran is just about the only old, traditional Thai festival that has a fixed date – April 14th. The majority, if not all the others are a function of  a full moon. Also traditionally, the ‘Big Monsoon’ arrived around about May 1st.

The farce that you see in Thai tourist cities these bears no relationship to the way Songkhran is celebrated by Thais in the countryside, where no-one uses 2″ bore water cannons to soak strangers. Rather, in a village, people will ask if they may put some on your head and a little wet talcum powder on your cheeks.

Khao Chae is also a tradition, but not all over Thailand, not by a long chalk. In fact, I have never seen it in the North and I have lived her for ten years. I asked my Thai wife about Khao Chae and she said that not only had she never tried it, but she had never seen this Thai dish on sale. My wife is forty-odd and has lived in Thailand all her life.

As you can see, Khao Chae has the right seasonal ingredients, namely rice and scarce water, in liquid and frozen forms, as a way of counteracting the heat of a Thai summer, when the temperature can easily be in the mid-forties Celsius.

Many of the silly articles concerning Khao Chae make it seem to be rice in iced water that has been scented with jasmine. This is partly true, but it would be a very poor meal if a national dish was just rice floating in scented iced water, wouldn’t it? It is an unbelievable recipe for sure.

The truth is that Khao Chae is cold rice, in iced, scented water with a jasmine flower, but the rice is eaten in conjunction with side dishes, which transform it into a far more memorable and appetising meal.

Thai cuisine is one of the most memorable and inspired cuisines in the world. Thais take their food extremely seriously, so for the fools who try to pass off the idea that Khao Chae is just rice in cold water are fooling no-one but the ignorant, which they obviously are too, preferring content for their web sites over the truth.

Read more about Thailand here: http://behind-the-smile.org

Amazon Image   Daddy’s Hobby (Behind The Smile – The Story of Lek, a Bar Girl in Pattaya Book 1)

by +Owen Jones

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Party Season in Thailand

Published by Owen Jones on 20 November 2014 1
Party Season in Thailand

Party Season in Thailand

 

Party Season in Thailand

There is a definite period in the year that most people would recognize as the party season in Thailand. The casual observer may say that party season in Thailand is March and April and it is true that there are a lot of events that a Protestant Christian would probably see as parties, although a Catholic may not, and that is because they are actually religious in nature.

The March-April ‘party season’ is focused on Songkhran, the old Thai New Year, which has the fixed date of the 14th. April, unlike all other religious events which are linked to the full moon and so are variable like our Easter. For the old New Year is a religious event and national holiday.

Most Thais would probably tell you that it is their favourite holiday of the year and involves three to ten days of partying depending on where you are. During the run up to Songkhran, many parents  have their unmarried seventeen-twenty-one year old sons become monks in the village Temple for between a week and a month.

This is also the most popular time to get married, not because of the weather, but because of its strong religious overtones. Weather-wise, this is the hottest time of the year and the driest, and Songkhran is a celebration that the tropical monsoon has come or a plea that it will do soon. It traditionally arrives in the first week of May.

Songkhran is also very popular with tourists, although the police have frequently complained that foreigners don’t treat the holiday with the respect it is due.

The ‘Big Monsoon’ in May is followed by a dry spell and then the ‘Mini Monsoon’ of July-August and another, but much cooler, couple of months in October-December. The peak holiday period, the high season, for tourists begins on October 26th and lasts for about ten weeks, but that doesn’t affect the vast majority of Thais and nor does Christmas, because they are Buddhist and don’t celebrate it.

However, they love this time of the year because it is cool and dry. There is no real need for air-conditioning or fans and insect numbers are at a minimum, so they can sit in their gardens until late in the night, eating and drinking with friends.

Loy Krathong , the beautiful, Thai St. Valentine’s Day, which many tourists travel to visit, falls in November.

Many corporate functions are held at this time of the year too for the same reason. This, the true party season in Thailand culminates with New Year’s Eve, which Thailand has adopted as its own.

Then there are two months ‘off’, with the exception of St. Valentine’s Day, and the prelude to Songkhran starts again.

These are the only two big secular and religious party periods, but there are also at least a dozen more Buddhist religious holidays throughout the year.

If you would like more information about Amazing Thailand and the party season in Thailand, click through here:

http://packageholidaystothailand.org

or read my series called ‘Behind The Smile’, about the adventures, and tribulations, of Lek a bar girl in Pattaya:

http://behind-the-smile.org

Amazon Image   Behind The Smile: The Story of Lek, a Thai Bargirl in Pattaya, Thailand (Daddy’s Hobby)

by +Owen Jones

 

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