Thai New Year Festival

Saturday afternoon Raphael and I headed to North Hollywood to celebrate Songkran (the Thai New Year). We were literally among the handful of non-Thai people there and only a handful of the signs for their yummy food were in English, although the Lobster Roll skewer was written as Robster Roll. Thankfully we were with a Thai friend of ours who helped us, but on our own we managed to order and consume some duck noodle soup, sticky banana rice, chicken skewers and BBQ pork, which we washed down with some sweet Logan juice and Thai iced tea with boba.

We even lit some incense at a Buddha shrine, heard traditional Thai songs preformed and watched a popularity contest, which is like a beauty contest but the audience chooses the winner based on the number of balloons that are purchased for that particular woman. So, if you think one of the girls is the prettiest you can buy a $10 blue balloon, a $20 white balloon or even a $100 red balloon and give it to her. Only two of the girls were really in competition with each other as they had four red balloons each. Although the girl I thought was the prettiest wasn't winning, I guess she wasn't popular enough though or had enough friends in the crowd.

4 comments

  1. See, we? We do not get anything like that around here, and it looks perfectly wonderful. What fun.

    Does the money GO to the prettiest girl, or to a charity?

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  2. Nathan, no the money goes to the temple, but the winner also gets $500.

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  3. What an odd "contest". At least the money went to something worthwhile.

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