Today we went to a wedding. All of Shrimp’s family arrived last night in pick-up trucks for the festivities, a home town boy made good, one of the massive extended Songkhla family is marrying a local island girl.

Shrimp’s family can’t believe their luck with one of their family members marrying so well. The night before, the boy came to say hi, he is such a sweet kid, the face of a child, and a beautiful generous nature. I wished him good luck and he thanked me, I think he himself cannot believe his good fortune, as he drove away in a brand new SUV.

Early Birds Catch Wedding Worms…..

There are three things you can say unequivocally about Thai weddings: they are early, long and loud. This one kicks off at nine am, the lucky number in Thailand – we make our way over to the next beach and begin the procession which is a raggle-taggle affair of appalling drummers shipped in for the occasion, all the family in their varying degrees of finery and drunkenness despite the early hour.

We made our way through the village, a collection of about fifty people, proudly stomping and banging, and singing accompanying the groom to his destination. As we passed each house everyone came out to wish him well and smile at the wedding party.
I as the only farang attracted some attention from the out-of-towners, some of whom have probably never seen one of my species before, I was photographed and feted, smiling as radiantly as I could muster without copious amounts of tea and porridge inside me.

Drunken Revelry at 9am….

As we made our way past one group of shacks a woman I recognized as the village drunk came out, bleary-eyed and disheveled, and realizing she was in the presence of a procession jumped on board and began to dance beautifully at the head of our gang.
Thai culture being what it is, no one blinked twice at this, everyone delighted in this woman’s good feeling and joy at the occasion. When I compare this to England it makes me laugh at the thought of a random drunk in their pajamas dancing ahead of the bride into the church.

Bang, Bang, Bang

We made our way onto the main street, drawn by our siren call of bongos and shouty electric Thai piano- as we did so, people opened fire. Quite literally: started firing guns into the air around us in celebration. A royal gun salute this was not, as I watched in horror more and more people reached into their waistbands and began to discharge rounds into the air.
I looked at Shrimp in horror, he looked back at me shrugging apologetically – his look spoke volumes – “I’m sorry, what can I say, my family, country people, don’t know any better, far be it for me to say anything, I am Thai, respect my elders, know my place.”

As one family member, who’d been hitting the lao khao rather hard waved his gun at the ground, pulling the trigger in a puzzled fashion as to why it wouldn’t fire, two metres from my daughter, I decided enough was enough and snatching her jumped out of line and ran for the safety of a nearby building, where I stayed until Shrimp came and got me an hour later, promising that all the shooting was over – it was time for the Buddhist ceremony.

This was conducted in the privacy of the house while everyone else sat outside under the obligatory marquee roasting alive on the ubiquitous plastic garden chairs. Clear Sky was hot and bothered and nearly choked to death on a large piece of duck someone had shoved in her mouth.

We decided to rejoin the festivities later, but before saying our goodbyes we made our way into the house to pay respect to the bride and groom. Shrimp’s nephew was pale, both from powder and trepidation, he mopped his brow with a hanky and looked shell shocked. The bride is pretty, in a Bangkok-nose-job sort of way.

Her heavily made up face and liberal gold drippings fail to register any expression at all – it’s the brides I pity, they’re up from five am doing makeup and preparing, and then spend the whole day sweltering in their war paint, meeting and greeting people in order of a strict social hierarchy, until they collapse after nearly twenty four hours awake, to be molested by the young fella who is now their hubby and probably doesn’t have a clue what he’s doing. All this without a drink or a fag, good god!

I hope she is good to him, I hope she sits on the bed before him, the Thai traditional way of showing who will be the boss in the marriage, he’s such a sweet boy.

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1. Kids’ Day