Mother’s Day weekend in Thailand

On Sunday it was the Queen’s Birthday and Thai mother’s day. In honor of this event Monday was a holiday and we had a mother’s day celebration at the school on Friday. This ceremony was really special and emotional. The teachers spent Thursday afternoon and evening preparing for the next day.  We bought flowers for all the teachers as a little thank you. All the children’s mothers – and maybe also some grandmothers – came on Friday morning. The kids sang songs, danced and read things (it was all in Thai so I don’t know what it was – maybe a poem or a story. Towards the end of the ceremony one of the girls sang a song and started crying. Soon almost all of the kids were crying and hugging their moms or coming up and hugging us. It was quite emotional and of course we all started crying too. Later they had mother – child games, i.e. musical chairs, freeze dance etc. The kids always wanted us to be their “mother”, so we played almost every game.

This girl started crying while she was performing the song.

In the afternoon the girls got ready for their dance performance in the evening. We all drove to a fancy hotel in Bangkok. The performance was in honor of a company’s 40 year anniversary and they’d donated money to the school. The girls (and three boys) did a good job performing – there were five different groups performing dances from different regions of Thailand.



With some students and the teachers before the show.



On Saturday we went to the famous Chatuchak market. It’s huge and there are so many different things to buy! We spent four hours there, and then had to take the van to Amphawa, famous for its floating market. We bought dinner at the many food stands. I tried quail eggs, had some corn on the cob and some refreshing watermelon. We took a boat out on the river to see fireflies. Even though I’ve seen them before, it was really special because they were all sitting in the trees, so it looked like the trees had blinking Christmas lights on them. At the end the boat took us to our hotel. It was a simple homestay, but nice. Even though we went to bed late, we still got up at 6 a.m. to give a monk in a boat some food so he’d pray for us. Since I’m not Buddhist I just watched and took pictures. It was worth getting up just for the beautiful lighting.

The view in the monring.

Where we stayed (there was water under
the house at night because of the tide)

Praying with the monk

After breakfast the owner of the hotel drove us to a nearby temple. That was really nice of her. All the Thai people are so friendly and helpful. The temple was amazing because it had trees growing all around it! Then we went to the floating market in Amphawa. We took the van back to Bangkok in the afternoon. Three buddhas and a shopping mall later we went to Chinatown for dinner. I really felt like I was in China since I was with five Chinese speaking people and just three of us who didn’t speak Chinese.

The temple with trees around it.



Floating market in Amphawa.

Four-faced Buddha in Bangkok.