FrontEverything
Everything on this site
All 17 pieces, in five sections. No dropdown, no search — the whole roster is on this page.
Counted in moons
Why the festivals move, and against what.
- The Thai year is counted in moons, and it does not line up with this oneThe observance calendar is lunar, the civil one is not, and almost everything confusing about Thai festival dates follows from that single fact.
- Not everywhere on the same weekThe same festival lands on different days in different provinces, and the reasons are regional rather than religious.
- The days the calendar is actually built onUposatha days set the rhythm the larger festivals hang from.
April, and everything gets wet
The new year, and what the water is for.
- What the water is actually forWater poured over Buddha images and over the hands of elders is the observance; the street soaking is what grew around it.
- The bowl, and the order it goes inThere is a sequence — images first, then elders, then everyone — and getting it wrong is the commonest visitor mistake.
- How to turn up without getting it wrongWhat is expected of a guest at a temple observance, described rather than prescribed.
Khao Phansa, and staying put
The rains retreat, and the year it shapes.
- Khao Phansa, and staying putFor three months of the rains the monastic community stays in one place, and the lay year reorganises itself around that.
- The candle that is carriedThe candle procession that opens the retreat, and what the candle is for once it arrives.
- Ok Phansa, and what endsThe retreat closes with robe-offering, and the calendar restarts.
Loy Krathong on a pond in November
A float, a candle, and what it carries.
- Loy Krathong on a pond in NovemberA banana-leaf float, a candle and a coin go onto the water on the full moon of the twelfth month — in Canada, onto whatever water there is.
- What goes into a krathong, and what does not any moreThe float was always meant to break down; what it is made of has changed as the consequences became visible.
- The same festival, four different weeksVancouver's observances are scheduled around Canadian working weeks, which spreads one festival across a month.
And in Vancouver
The community, the temple and the kitchen, here.
- And in VancouverA small community, a temple in the Lower Mainland, and a calendar kept against a different climate and a different working week.
- What a grocer here can actually getGalangal, makrut lime and holy basil arrive on a schedule, and the menu of what can be cooked fresh follows it.
- Boat noodle, and what the takeaway servesThe gap between a Bangkok stall's bowl and a Canadian menu is mostly Thai-Chinese cooking, and that is a history rather than a compromise.