Makha Bucha

On this day, the full moon of the third lunar month, a few thousand years ago, 1,300 enlightened monks spontaneously congregated to hear Buddha deliver a seminal sermon.
Now it's one of the three high holy days, and a national holiday in Thailand.
As the schoolday drew to a close yesterday, I felt bad about not "doing" anything special for the three-day weekend.  But then I realized that I'm in Thailand, on the same road as Wat Phra Mahathat, one of the oldest and most important wats in Thailand.  It was a pain to find out when and where the observations would get underway--welcome to Thailand--as it turns out events have been happening all week and the culmination will be nearly 24 hours of different observations phasing around each other.
So I woke up early, snuck out the locked front door without waking up the gate guard, and got to Wat Mahathat before sunrise and well after everything was set up and underway.

(For the sake of a quicker load time, the photos the smallest available versions of those posted here.)

Wat Phra Mahathat's chedi just as the sun is coming up.
Tradition has that the chedi was built over a chip of Buddha's tooth

The southern entrance just after sunup 

You come through the gate and there's a hawker or five with bolts of saffron cloth for 5 Baht per rod.
You buy as much as you need to make merit--in some cases, a couple of bolts.  Then you start walking clockwise around the compound.
Some buy a certain length and cut it off to walk as a family or pilgrimage group, but most join in a train as long as the cloth lasts to walk in concentric laps of a saffron river until the bottleneck at the entrance to the holy areas.

In the foreground are the concentric rings of the saffron river.
Behind them is the bottleneck to the holy grounds.

ROTC guys join the saffron river.

ROTC guys buying flowers and incense for making merit once they get into the temple

Foreground: making merit or receiving absolution or somesuch from a monk.
Midground: a hawker bazaar
Background: Mahathat's chedi

Just inside the entrance.
Fore: displays of sundried fish (smells great)
Mid: the balloon seller talking with a monk

Just inside the gate; the tents are all hawkers.
And what better place to sell fake and ripped off and deep fried and copied and handmade and genuinely artistic stuff than on the grounds of the oldest temple in Southern Thailand on one of the holiest days of the year?

Yes, we're riding a bike with a chair strapped to the back
and we're in the middle of the bazaar

An open spot in the bazaar;
note the chedi in the background--the maze of awnings and umbrellas and press of moichendizing, of bootlegged and knocked-off and hand-made stuff to buybuybuy runs to the bank of the saffron river.

Inside one wing of the bazaar, where the tarps keep the sun off anything below about 64 inches

Foreground: syrup drinks
Frame right: selling shoes in baskets.
Mid: shallots
Back: clothing (either made streetside or collected from American donation agencies)
Note the CFL elements in incandescent-shaped bulbs and a rotating fan; most tents like this run off a couple of car batteries)

Real Gold!  Cheap Cheap!

Foreground: drying fish
Mid: the saffron river
Back: the ordination hall

One of the few signs to appear in English anywhere in the city
Also one of the most important (and not for, although perchance from, the product)

Foreground: dried chili, shallot and garlic
Background: a breakfast stand, selling traditional vats of sour spicy whatnot to go on noodles and rice

Foreground: traditional Thai breakfast eaten in the traditional setting
(on mats with shoots and leaves plucked off nearby trees)
Mid: the dishwashing area for the food vendor set up on the little shrine
Background: a shadow puppet play for the kidlets

looking behind the magic

A traditional dishwashing setup, running from frame left:
scrape the plates into the sewer
heavy soapy scrub
soapy rinse
final rinse
return to dish basket (which is unrinsed after bringing the dirties  back to get washed)

Dozing off behind vats of fermenting goat head oil

Another goat-oil seller

The a klick from the wat.  Of course there was no allocation for public parking or shuttle transport.

What's unusual here is that the songtaus are lined up so nicely

 

A nice gesture at controlling the detritus left by the saffron river's floodding

Shadow puppets frame left, fish hawkers frame right, flood damage in between.

Access to the chedi shut down midday.
Here's a couple hours' worth of merit

The first round of the evening: buy a bundle of flower, candle, and incense, then light the candle and incense and walk thrice around the ordination hall

Inside the ordination hall

After your three laps, you deposit your candle and flowers on a wire mesh tableau.    Kidlets--the same who hawk flowers and incense--run around collecting flowers and incense sticks.  

A monk depositing her candle while one of the hoodlums dances around

And on the way out, you can buy clothes from a heap, mangos, and anything else in the bazaar