Chinese New Year

  Like most people, we have been aware of Chinese New Year when the media brings it up each February. We did not pay a whole lot of attention to it in the past, except when Lorraine taught a unit on it in her classroom. Experiencing Chinese New Year within an Asian culture, however, is unique. Bangkok has a rather large Chinatown, measuring approximately one square kilometer. Since our arrival here, there have been numerous advertisements regarding the upcoming Lunar New Year. We had visited Chinatown briefly during one of our earlier excursions and decided that a return visit was a must in order to experience the celebrations for ourselves. Organizers turned the main road through Chinatown into a pedestrian walkway for this event. As you will see in the following pictures, this was quite a colorful and entertaining experience.

Yaowarat Road became devoid of all but pedestrian traffic.

Red is considered to be a lucky color, so we saw it everywhere.

Even the Terra Cotta warriors came for a visit.

Traditional Chinese puppet theaters were in evidence....

...as well as some non-traditional displays.

Children seemed to be getting into the spirit of the event.

Dragon dancers were everywhere.

More dragons.

Drummers accompanied the dragon dancers along the route.

As the dragons danced down the street, they often stopped at local establishments seeking monetary donations for good luck. It was not uncommon to see individuals on the street also putting money in the dragon's mouth for their own good luck.

Some of the dragons became acrobatic.

Of course, what would a dragon dance be without a little smoke coming from the dragon?

We stopped at a very nice Chinese restaurant for some lunch.

The one disappointment we had was when police cleared the road for a visit from the Thai Princess, only to wait nearly two and a half hours with no sight of her.