Happy New Year - Bangkok

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Chinese New Year-Photo-01

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"Sin Gia Yu Ee, Sin Ni Huad Chai".

Not sure whether that is how I should spell it - my Thai friends tell me that is the Chinese (in Mandarin?) for something like:  Good wishes, Happy New Year. I hope they're correct.  (Maybe it means something unspeakable or disgusting!  And I shall be ejected from NowPublic for ever and cast into outer darkness!

So today, New Year's Day, The year of the Ox, is a time for going to remember the ancestors at each shrine, along with families, distant relations, your schoolmates or the youth groups run by the shrines.  Whoever they are with, here are a few moments to savour the Chinese visiting their shrines in Bangkok's chinatown - Yaowarat!

Lots of my pics get taken at the Poh Teck Tung shrine: it's a favourite of mine.  For some reason it often gets excluded from the China Town tourist circuit.  It's officially just outside the Yaowarat area;  but hey, so are lots of other Chinese shrines.  In fact, there are probably more Chinese shrines on the other side of the river, along Thonburi (which, although still a significant part of Bangkok) gets ignored by tourists and other farangs. 

But back to Poh Teck Tung (the 't's are pronounced with a slight hint of a 'd'), it is famous for all the dirty work it does:  I say dirty because it cleans up the mess after vehicle crashes.  Buries the dead, especially those (often undocumented Burmese Laos, or Kampucha migrants) who hold no ID and have no one to look after them in Bangkok.  It also runs a fleet of ambulances, some of the few in Bangkok and at night, some of them park alongside the most hazardous intersections, waiting for the crashes to occur.  Pretty macabre, but necesary.  I support Poh Teck Tung because it's a great place to hang out too! 

Sometimes I go along of a morning, just to watch the people come and go, with their joss sticks, their paper 'goodies' (immitation clothing) that they burn in the furnace, as a way of looking after or paying respect for their ancestors!  Perhaps the rest of us should consider doing something like that!

But I also head straight for this shrined at Duht Chin since it's always a kind of jamboree, with people squeezed together, all holding their joss sticks and trying to get to the kra thang thoop (sand in the big  bowl) to extinguish them. I love the crowds;  they make the shrine really buzz.  Lots of them are queueing up at metal grilled counters (a bit like banks when we used to go in them!) where worshippers can buy certificates to show they've given money to the shrine.  The certtificates then get burnt so that the smoke will reach their ancestors, up there in Chinese cyber-space!  

Now that is real, exotic, modern Chinese culture!