Culture is a truly strange beast. Despite living here in Thailand some 20 years now, having a half-Thai teenage daughter, speaking tolerably fluent Thai and living a much more Thai life than most expats, I'm still sometimes rammed so hard up against the cultural differences that my nose hurts, as if I've banged into an invisible glass door. 🤣
In Thai, Valentine's Day is often called Wan Sia Tua Haeng Chart (วันเสียตัวแห่งชาติ). It is NOT about getting down on one knee and asking for permission to marry, or declaring eternal love. Thai people are far more pragmatic than that. Nationally, in the last decade or so in public anyway, it has commonly become known as National Deflowering Day - the loss of virginity day. Ministry of Health statistics claim that the most common days for a girl to be deflowered are Valentine's Day and Loy Krathong - the festival which celebrates the end of the rains in November.
What do the words actually mean? At first looky-see, to the foreigner with grade school level reading skills, the transliterated Thai name for the festival is alarming. Wan = Day. Sia = Broken. Tua = Body. Haeng = Dry. Chart = Nation.
Puddling through the actual nuances of the translation alarmed me to such a degree as to necessitate a phone call to my daughter. 🤣 She calmed me and patiently explained that perhaps the best translation she could come up with was "The Day of Lose The Body of the Nation". Where the virginal hope/property of the nation becomes the property of an individual.
I needed a coffee after that call 😆to ponder the nuances - the suggestion that a sexual woman gives her loyalty to her husband-partner and not the greater good.
In a Thai wedding ceremony, the last part of the festivities (as it has been done in a thousand cultures for a thousand years, all around the world) is the Bedding of the Bride. And in Thailand, we still see that done where the immediate families walk the couple to an actual bed chamber, where the covers are usually strewn with rose petals in the shape of a heart. Thai people take the deflowering metaphor all the way.
This is what typically one would see done now - ceremonially - as the "deflowering":
And YES, there was a similar photo taken of ME, during my ceremonial "deflowering" after a 5 day Thai wedding ceremony in Sukothai, Central Thailand, in 2004. 😂😜 Honestly, my Thai was very wobbly then and it was simply too hard to explain to around 400 expectant new Thai relatives and village members that my then-3-months-pregnant-self was offended by the idea of being "given" away. Even if it was only in a ceremonial way. Luckily the photo lurks somewhere (in digitized form) on a CD and is far too challenging to dig up for this post! 🤣 One sorta hopes it may be lost forever... 🤣
And so Valentine's Day here is a STRANGE MIX of western commercialism, girlish disney-tainted hopes, dire health warnings (still high levels of HIV, STDs and teenage pregnancy here) and mass handouts of free condoms. Added to that, this year, we have the absurdity of Covid warnings.
Have a quick ATK before heading between the sheets 🤣
Bangkok handing out free condoms ahead of Valentine's Day
Thailand is NOT a Christian culture - it's offcial Buddhism is heavily imbued with a heady dose of Hinduism, Brahminism and Animism. All of which are deeply into symbols.
Thais flock to shrine of love ahead of Valentine's Day
Tucked beside one of the capital's biggest shopping malls, the Trimurti shrine to Hinduism's three most powerful gods has become famous in Thailand as a place people visit every Thursday in the quest to find love. But this week's crowd, mainly young people of all genders, was larger than usual as the timing also coincided with an auspicious alignment of the stars.
"I came here often and got a lover before, but we broke up, so I'm here to ask for a new one," said Thanyathron Sae-aeng, 23.
The ceremony began with a blast of sound from a conch shell by a Brahmin priest at 7.39 p.m. (1139 GMT), a timing also considered auspicious. Source
And so I sit here CULTURALLY BEWILDERED this glorious Monday Valentine's Day.... caught somewhere between old religious ideas, out-dated patriarchy, memories, commercialism and Eternal Hope of Lovers, even in this crazy era of Covid. I'm pondering the Lovers that were, who didn't step up, and who are strangely silent amidst the noisy clanging and clamour that is Thai Valentine's Day.
Chocolate, anyone??
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