Firstly, I have to admit that Phi Ta Khon was in my bucketlist for such a long, long time. As a sensation-seeking culture buff, I’m always attracted to some kind of rites involving something inexplanable, like faith, and Thailand seems to have a plenty of that.
So this year I joined the Phi Ta Khon festival in the North-Eastern province of Loei. Unlucky to attend the whole event, i was lucky enough to be there in the first day.
And the result? Totally love it! Alrhough the ghost part was not that exciting (they just danced around in their ghost costumes with masks on) but the whole experience was just wow. To me, the festival is the way to compromise old primitive beliefs (ancestral ghosts) with the new (Buddhism) and what surprised me is the whole community participated. For the ceremony that has been here like hundreds of year, it’s rare to see the younger generation joining in. And they seem to have a lot of fun!
Or may be that is the key word, the fun 🙂
