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Thai people are a festive bunch. They celebrate a whole slew of non-Thai holidays such as Chinese New Year and Halloween and even though 95% of Thailand practices Buddhism they celebrate a few non-Buddhist festivals like Christmas and the Navaratree Hindu Festival. We were sitting on the steps of California Wow listening to electronic beats watching the traffic go by. We have been in Bangkok long enough that we are starting to run out of ideas. I looked down at my phone thinking I had received yet another promotion in Thai from AIS, but was pleasantly surprised to see a text message from Rod. Let me back up 13 years.

One of my best friends in college was a guy named Rod. I was raised by an American family in Mexico. Rod was raised by an American family in Thailand. I suppose that after returning to the United States in 1995 all of my deepest friendships have shared a certain multi-cultural confusion, not really being from here or there. I am not sure how or why, but in the chaos of graduation, job interviews, and visiting family we failed to exchange contact info before leaving college. I had looked for Rod on Facebook with no luck and always wondered how we was doing. Here I am in Bangkok, 11 years laters. Ingrid and I are walking around aimlessly looking for a place to eat dinner. Sunrise Tacos always catches my eye as it reminds me of the things I miss most from home. Sure enough, there is Rod; mid-burrito.

Anyway, Rod sent a text message to let us know that a big Hindu festival was happening down by Surasak station. We hopped on the train and just a few moment later arrived at Navaratree Hindu Festival. I would venture a guess that 100,000 people were in attendance, mostly dressed in white and covered in red and white powder. A procession of actual hindus paraded through the streets with metal objects pierced through their backs and cheeks. Thousands of Thai people lined the streets with elaborate Hindu offerings and knelt in anticipation of a Hindu blessing. I don’t speak Thai so I may be imagining this, but I observed one exchange that seemed to go like this. A young Thai kid dressed in white looks up at his older friend and asks “Ok, so what exactly do we say when the Hindu guy gets here?”. She laughs and replies: “Om Shanti Shanti Om”. Again, this is entirely speculative on my part, but I am pretty sure there weren’t any Hindu converts on the night. It’s hard to explain, but I don’t think the Thai people were making fun of Hinduism, but I do think they were having fun with Hinduism; if that makes any sense. Ingrid and I walked around for a few hours with big smiles on our faces as we dodged the occasional coconut or hand full of talcum powder.