Dogs at a Funeral

The mother of one of the Thai English teachers, co-teacher PiBen, passed away last weekend. She was 91 and died of natural causes. We were invited to the funeral, which in Buddhist/ Thai tradition lasts five days. Ms. Bpun, the head of the Foreign Language Department, picked us up at our apartment at 7:30 pm, as the funeral was to begin at 8:00 pm and last about one hour. When we arrived at the temple, there were actually two ceremonies occurring next to each other. Tables were set up on the outside of the temple, where the body lay in a closed coffin, covered in flower decorations. There were quite a lot of people there, maybe one-hundred or so. And this was the third night of the funeral. The same chanting occurs each night of the funeral, as it is the guests that change. Tonight was for PiBen and one of her sisters. So the crowd included many teachers from SriRacha school, as well as teachers from a school in Pattaya, where her sister works. We were sat at a front and center table, where once the chanting began, we held our wai for nearly half an hour. Orange soda (Fanta) was served, followed by a soup and fruit.

In the middle of the monks' chanting, which were prayers for PiBen's mother to safely enter the next world, dogs howled and growled all around us. Only a few faces in the crowd turned around to see about all the commotion. Honestly, I thought it was disturbing and could not focus on the task at hand - my wai. All of the sudden, out of the corner of my eye, I noticed two dogs attacking each other at the throat! Ms. Bpun whispered to Jacqueline that they were fighting over food -- "too many dogs, not enough food". A bit sad and a bit scary... and while there were some crowd giggles and tsk tsks, most were able to ignore the dogfight occurring only a few feet away! But, this is the bit of culture that I took away from the experience.

Oh, and as Ms. Bpun backed up out of her parking spot, she hit a tree... Yikes! And although her van was dented, her response was "Mai bin nai ka" -- "no worries"! And that was tonight in Thailand - The Land of Smiles.