"Oh Thais just wanna have fun!" Part 1

One of the many wonderful aspects of Thai culture is the endless desire for fun. Thai people love to laugh, sing, eat, and drink. Basically they love to party, no matter what the occasion, or lack thereof. No wonder they call it the land of smiles!

In the Thai school system, December is pretty much a joke. The first two weeks are filled with half empty classrooms and long winded excuses (punctuated with broken English and hand gestures) that detail the very important activity that has removed the students from my lessons. In America, December is a month filled with preparations mainly aimed at Christmas and New Years. In Thailand, December is just another excuse to throw a party every week! The first of which is for Sports Days.

View of the field during opening ceremonies

Unlike most school events that are chaotic and organized by the administration, Sports Days are created, planned, and executed by only the students, which means it’s the first event where we actually knew what was going on ahead of time. The seniors take the reins in organizing the student body, but every single kid plays an important role in this mega celebration. Now the actual meaning behind the Sports Days was completely lost on me since we watched almost no sporting events during the two-day party. But what we did see was absolutely outrageous!

Me with Team Pink!

The celebrations begin with the kick off parade. Being the largest high school in the province, we have a reputation to uphold, so the standard float just won’t cut it. First of all the entire school (including the teachers) are divided into six different colored teams: si kiaw (green) si daang (red) si lluang (yellow) si chompuu (pink) si muang (purple) and si faa (blue). So each color gets a huge chunk of the budget for their portion on the parade. Each section had a marching band, costumed women holding signs, a truck with a sound system or live band on it, a pack of dancing students, beautiful girls in elaborate costumes and headdress lounging on truck beds being shaded by young men in equally intricate costumes, another pack of students, and some sort of anti drugs and alcohol campaign section. Team red even got permission for one of our very own, Laura, to be dressed up and added to the procession. Words cannot describe the insanity of this parade or the beauty of these costumes, so here are the pictures to speak for me.

Team Purple's Beauty Queens

Team Pink's Peacocks

Laura as a Thai Princess

The rest of the day was dedicated to the opening ceremony, which is an opportunity for each color to show their team spirit in several ways. The first of which is the bleachers. Each team is given a section of bleachers opposite the spectators area to decorate as they wished. And they certainly got creative. Each color had a theme, costume items, a live band, Mcs, dancers, snacks, and drinks. Over the next two days, the bleachers were a round the clock party. Although those who sat in the bleachers were at times summoned to perform skilled routines with props like hats or fans. They were judged on these routines at two different times.

Team Red and Team Pink's Party Bleachers

Another way students could contribute was the dance crew. Each color had a dance crew of anywhere from 5 to 15 people. During the opening and closing ceremonies, each crew would take their place on the field and perform their dances to the same songs, simultaneously. I had the honor of being a judge and I can’t tell you how distracting it is to be judging all 6 teams at the same time! We had to base their scores on their costumes, their dance moves, if their dance moves matched the song, and other more non-descript categories like “quality” and “tone” (love the Thai evaluation forms). The end result, was a blur of colors, movements, and yelling. To this day I haven’t figured it out but periodically during their routine they would chant from 1 to 10 in Thai and repeat a set of drill-like movements???

The Dance Crews

On the second day we saw the only sports that would take place during the Sports Days: running and tug-of-war, go figure. The oddest thing about the races was that most of the students chose to run barefoot. Mind you, this field that the ceremonies took place on was not the most well kept, the red clay often clumps into hard-packed chunks that would be rather painful if kicked mid sprint. But no matter, they ran anyways, many jogged, many walked, and some even fainted. I mean when its 85 degrees in winter…

Last event of the day: tug-of-war. Of the six teams, only five competed (yellow apparently just didn’t feel like it, oh mai pen rai). I believe team blue was the ultimate champion, but it didn’t really matter. In fact, I have no idea who was the “winner” of the sports days trophies that had been on display all week. But apparently, in Thailand, it’s not all about winning. Because truth be told, Thais just wanna have fun!

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