Full Moon Festival

One of the most beautiful festivals celebrated in Thailand is that of Loy Krathong.

It falls on the November full moon night.

Loy means float and Krathong leaf bowl or wreath.

All over Thailand people make these wonderfully decorated floats out of folded banana leaves and artistically arranged jasmine,orchids and chrysanthemum flowers. Candles and sticks of incense are placed in them as well as a few coins as offering to Buddha and they are then lit and placed in the canals and waterways where they float away,perhaps bringing the wished for happiness and appeasement to their makers.

My Thai friend invited me to the festival.She had been helping the children in her daughters school, to make their Krathongs and I had watched and even tried the complicated folding of the leaves myself. Obviously it would have been insulting to refuse her,even when she told me that the three of us would go of course in the national costume. Have you ever seen the national costume!?

I was taken along to a shop where the beautiful heavy silk dresses and ornamental jewelry and tiaras could be hired.They are very expensive so few people have their own. The chosen dresses were then fitted,the bodice so tight we could hardly breath,and the long narrow skirt definately not designed to walk quickly in. We were to return on the afternoon of the festival to be made up,and our dressed in the traditional styling.

It took three and a half hours for them to turn us, into unbelievable looking china dolls,with a flawless make up,not only on our faces but on our arms and shoulders as well. We hardly recognised ourselves afterwards. Our hair was sprayed until it was so stiff that the sea breezes couldn’t harm it, put up and crowned with a gold Tiara and Orchids. Gold Jewelry was fitted around our waists, arms, neck and ears.

At last we were ready. My friend in a dress of burgundy and gold,mine the colour of the moon with gold,and her seven year old daughter in a lovely peach.

I soon got used to the nudges and stares, smiles and thumbs up. We were the absolute center of attraction.Everyone wanted to take my photo and the flashing cameras of the hundreds of Thai who weren’t in a costume made me feel like a Hollywood star on Oscar night. It certainly isn’t usual for them to see a blond “Farang” in the costume of old Siam.

Carrying our Krathongs we finally arrived at the canal and lowered them into the water.Slowly they floated away,the candles flickering in the moonlight.Our wishes going with them.

Will they come true? I hope so.

Dabbling in the Paint

It had to happen. I toddled along to an Art Vernissage which I do like attending for Arts sake if the subjects in the widest sense appeal to me. Not like all those people of course who are only there to wine and dine,although I am partial to a good, cold, dry white,and even more so to a glass of bubbly.Bollinger, if you want to know.

No, I am really interested in Art,and those of you that may have followed my revelations in that category will know that I like to dabble a bit myself. But truth is I am no talent,or I don’t think I am. People tell me what I paint is good but I am never satisfied with it. One of my colleagues at Art classes,say’s he feels just the same. The trouble is we are both perfectionists, the difference being, he turns out some brilliant work,but as he says he has been painting for years. That doesn’t help my self esteem either because he works at the next table.

So I got rather unsatisfied, and dissilusioned about it all and failed to enrol for the last set of Watercolour classes.-And I didn’t even excuse myself,or give a reason why to my teacher.

I havn’t picked up a brush or pencil in three monthes.
But I have been learning a lot from a fellow blogger: http:/ creatisphere.wordpress.com and realise now that even Artists go through this unsatisfaction.

So I went along to the Vernissage of a Watercolour Artist from Zürich, thinking I might learn something.
And who was the first person that I saw there on the other side of the wine.
My Art Teacher.

He had realised I was going through a “stage” and he hoped I would come back.

I start again next Tuesday.

Would You Believe It!

Would you believe it,

The missing Ferdinand Hodler painting”Bare Chesnut Trees in Ticino” which I wrote about yesterday has been found.

An employee of the Volkart Stiftung in Winterthur, a town near Zürich, after watching the news on television, remembered seeing the painting in their storage room.

The painting belongs to Andreas Reinhart, whose family are generous art patrons with their own museum in the town. The Oskar Reinhart Foundation Museum. Am Stadtgarten, Winterthur.

He is very glad to have it back because it was left him by his late brother George,whose entire estate was donated to the Volkart Foundation, and of which Andreas is president.

To the question, if the painting was ever really stolen? At the moment the police are still investigating every possibility they say.

The loss was only discovered after the real transport firm sent by the Bern Museum stood in front of Reinharts door and was told it had already been collected by the artful trickster.

Winter Burns in Zürich

If you are wondering how long it took “Old Man Winter” to burn in Zürich yesterday.(See Post)
It took 26 Minutes and 1 second. For the records anyway.
His head was long gone before the big bang was heard. (Who was to blame for that?)

It means of course we are in for a bad Summer here if the oracle is to be believed.
It means too that Basle can laugh over Zürich again at their next Carnival.