We arrived in Phan, the head town in the district of the same name, about 10:00 Friday evening.  Phan is a town of about 20,000 inhabitants, with another 100,000 in the surrounding area.  There is one main street and one main hotel – the Chiang Rung – where we were to stay.  At five stories with a rooftop restaurant, the Chiang Rung Hotel is one of the tallest buildings in town with a commanding view of downtown, below.

We checked into our rooms on the fourth floor.  They were small and the decoration tired but at least they were clean.  The mattress and pillows were stuffed with coconut husks, supposedly good for your back but they proved to be the bane of our next two nights’ existence as neither Tawn nor I could sleep worth a darn.  That was the only low point of the trip so I’ll move beyond it quickly.

The six o’clock alarm came all too soon as the auspicious time for the Buddhist ceremony had been fixed at seven o’clock.  We got ready and then met Kobfa and Markus and Tam, who had arrived in Phan ahead of us.  First stop was the nearby temple to pick up the monks for the ceremony.  They were still out on their rounds collecting food donations, the first sign that time moves at a different pace in a small northern town.  By comparison, residents of Bangkok are positively Astro-Hungarian in their timeliness.

With Kobfa and I singing “Life in a Northern Town” by The Dream Academy, we departed the temple monk-less and headed to Tam and Pune’s mother’s house two blocks away.  Her two-story house, a solidly built wood structure well designed as older Thai houses are to take advantage of natural air circulation to keep it comfortable, was across the street from a morning market.  After a few minutes we determined that the ceremony was not going to start anytime soon so we headed across the street to the market, below.

This market is the real deal and would make fans of the farmers’ markets in the United States drool with excitement.  Small growers displayed their produce, whatever was in season.  Most of it had been picked just a few hours earlier or in the case of the meat products, slaughtered.

We stopped at the closest thing to a Starbucks that Phan has – the soybean milk vendor, right.

Warm soybean milk in the morning is as evocative for many Thais as Cap’n Crunch cereal is for Americans… although not for me as I was never allowed anything sweeter than Raisin Bran, much to my dentist’s delight.

As someone raised on cow’s milk, soybean milk has never quite lived up to its visual promise.  It looks like milk and my tongue is expecting that richness – that fat feeling on the tongue – that soybean cannot provide.  At best is is watery in comparison and at worst, chalky.  Still, I know it is good for you so I don’t disparage it.  I just drink coffee instead!

The sun was not yet over the horizon and there was just a slight chill to the air.  But only a slight one, not really one worthy of the scarf that Kobfa had fashionably wrapped around his neck, right.

Along with our soybean milk and coffee, we enjoyed an order to ba tong goh – Chinese donuts.  Sometimes served lightly sweetened, this unleavened bread fries up nice and light and, when the oil is fresh and properly hot, they are almost free of any trace of grease.

Of course, when the oil is not fresh or is too cool, they are an oily, soggy and thoroughly disgusting mess.

Thankfully, we were there early in the morning and the cook was well experienced in her frying so we enjoyed these light and tasty treats, with just a hint of sesame from the seeds scattered throughout the dough.

We were back at Tam and Pune’s mother’s house about eight o’clock as close friends and family members filled the second floor of the house for the ceremony.  There were eight or nine monks lining the walls with a lay person – a friend of the family – sort of filling the role of master of ceremonies.  Pune and Detlev were sitting at the front of the room to receive the blessing of the monks.

Thai Buddhist ceremonies are remarkably casual affairs.  I’ve seen this at weddings and funerals I’ve attended.  While people will have their hands folded in prayer, for the most part they chat quietly amongst themselves except for a few key prayers that everyone knows by heart.  I think those are equivalent to the Lord’s Prayer in Christian churches that are learned by rote memorization in childhood and are repeated not so much with thought given to each word as it is spoken, but instead as a string of syllables that follow one another in a particular order.

Of course, some people give much more consideration as they say the prayers.

I learned from Kobfa that the number of monks at a ceremony does not have to be an odd number.  It was my previous understanding that the number was always odd with five or more, and that you only used four monks at funerals.  He corrected my understanding and told me that four is the minimum number of monks needed to conduct a ceremony, sort of a quorum.

Some of the monks also take things pretty casually.  One of the younger monks answered a mobile phone call during the early part of the ceremony, when only the head monk was speaking.  He was discreet about it, though, using part of the sleeve of his robe to muffle the conversation.

Right: Pune, Tam and their mother.  She has not been well as she advances in years and is sometimes not fully lucid.  It appeared that she really enjoyed the ceremony and that it meant a lot to her.  I know it was important to Pune that she hold this ceremony with her mother present, and I’m sure the extra effort in having it in Phan was worth it.

The ceremony lasted about an hour and then afterwards a large meal was served to everyone in the downstairs area.  It was a simple but tasty meal and it gave us all a chance to visit some more.  A large contingent of Pune’s colleagues had rented a van and come up from Khrungthep, so she had lots of people to visit with!

In the afternoon we had some time to spend before the evening ceremony.  We actually took a trip back up to Chiang Rai but I’ll cover that in Part 3 of the entry as it fits better there.

Before the evening ceremony, Tawn and I went with Markus and Tam to look for wine.  Normally, a Thai wedding banquet has whisky, soda water, and some sort of soft drink on the table.  There were a group of us who are not whisky drinkers so we found a small liquor shop that had about two dozen bottles of wine sitting on a back shelf.  We bought four bottles, which seemed enough to get us through the festivities.

Left, Tawn waits on the curb as we figure out which questionable bottle of wine is the least risky to try.  In the end, both the Chilean Merlot and the French Cabernet were good values and tasty.

The reception was held on the rooftop restaurant at the hotel.  This is a nice space that covers the entire roof, with the central area covered and the sides open to the breeze.  There were lovely flowers and the view of the sunrise was spectacular. 

Even though things were supposed to begin at six, the guests were running on Chiang Rai time and it was nearly seven before the tables were filled.  There were about 100 people there, so it wasn’t a small event by any means.

We had a little time before the ceremony to shoot some pictures, with Kobfa trying to capture Tawn and me with the orange glow of the sunset illuminating our faces.

Before dinner started I caught a few pictures of one of the appetizers, guaitiaw luie suan – garden vegetables (in this case with minced pork) wrapped in rice noodles.  I didn’t take pictures of everything else at dinner (awww…) instead deciding to just enjoy the celebration.

Some pictures from the evening’s festivities:

Above: The evening started with Detlev and Pune being introduced to the guests and taking their places at the head of the restaurant.  Family and friends – by group – were invited to come up and perform the Northern Thai style blessing ritual.  Elsewhere in Thailand you bless the newlyweds by pouring a small amount of water over their hands.  In the north, you tie a string around their wrist.  Needless to say, by the end of the day Detlev and Pune had a lot of strings around their wrists!

There were the obligatory speeches by various phu yai – literally, “big people”.  In this case a longtime family friend, Pune’s boss, and Markus all had remarks to say.  Interestingly, the lady doing translations took many liberties with Markus’ speech.  Originally there had been a little bit of a debate between Markus and Tam over how their relationship should be identified to the guests.  Would Markus say he was Tam’s partner, his friend, or something else entirely? 

This is an interesting question because from a Western perspective it is rife with personal and political implications.  The implications get lost in the translation, though, as the equivalent Thai words do not carry the same meanings.  Ultimately, it was a moot point because the translator introduced Markus as Detlev’s cousin and never really explained his relationship to Tam instead explaining that Markus was a friend of Pune’s.

Above, Pune and Detlev, wrists full of string, take a moment to relax in the midst of the night’s proceedings.  After the speeches, Markus played two slide shows that he had made showing pictures of the bride and groom’s childhoods and the time they’ve spent together since meeting.  This is a great example of how technology has become pervasive enough that everyone can have such “high tech” features to their weddings. 

While the presentations were finishing up, I noticed that on the terrace of the restaurant there were a few cowboy-looking types tuning their fiddle and banjo.  Sure enough, they were joined by three others and the evening soon erupted into what can best be described as somewhere between Thai bluegrass and country music. 

Different from the Issan folk music popular in the country’s northeast region, the cowboy mentality of the north has borrowed heavily from the cowboy music and folklore of the western United States.  Jeans are Wranglers, belt buckles are big, and the music is an acoustic string quintet in which all the players sing.

Many of the songs were in Thai but a surprising number were American country standards, including this version of “Take Me Home, Country Roads“, John Denver’s breakthrough single. 

The guests were enthusiastically clapping, stomping and enjoying the party long past the point where, at a typical Thai wedding banquet, they would have had their fill of dinner and have departed.  Things reached a crescendo when Pune and Detlev started dancing to the music, to the guests’ enjoyment.

It was a fun evening for all involved and while this was one of the smallest and lowest-key weddings I’ve been to here in Thailand (and Tawn and I seem to go to quite a few of them), it was one of the most fun and sincere, held for the enjoyment of the bride and groom and their loved ones instead of just just to build up the face of their families.

In Part 3 I’ll talk about our final day in Chiang Rai.