After visit to the elephant village, we went where the party was - a neighboring village had some festive thing going in it's WATS (temple/monastery). We saw a lot of action - here are some boys playing ball. The same type of thing is also played in Pondicherry; seems to have been a french obsession - hitting one iron ball with another and seeing who gets the closest to the original ball.
Then we saw some kids gambling! they were betting with money on pictures of roosters, fish and frogs. The man was throwing a huge dice and every time some bunch of kids got their number rooster chosen, there was a huge amount of cheering. Very noisy.
The devotees had hung garlands of money in front of the wat as an offering. Seems that bribing of gods is a done thing in places other than india too.
Old man sat at his house door oblivious to all the sounds of chanting, kids screaming, loudspeakers with thai music.
Like in all villages, a festival calls for sales of plastic items. I've seen that happening in Indian villages as well.
A whole bunch of ladies were preparing for the feast behind the wat. This here what you see being chopped up is buffaloes skin! I didn't know that and tried it. Sort of chewy, cartilagey - tasteless like what plastic must taste like. But the crunch and chew was funny. I got a chance to eat buffalo skin once again at our hotel - this time round, it was pickled and since i liked it i found out what it was - buffalo skin.
Note how round stools are used for cutting and square stools are used for sitting. Neat.
'Modern' village boys, facing the camera very coyly. That boy in red has a real intriguing face - almost like an aztec.
And finally, chicken feet on barbecue! They must be adding a lot of color to it to make it extra appealing. Even the claws were all there. Below the chicken feet are buffalo meats skewers.
And i had a go at it. Wasn't really much to bite on - just the skin that needs to be pulled off. it was a strange strange feeling and i couldn't eat more than 1.5 of those feet. The stuff was cold - maybe if was hot and sizzling it would've tasted better.... The buffalo meat skewer i also tried - but it was chewy beyond redemption.
