Travel & Humanitarian Photos
I’ve just returned from the annual Phi Ta Khon (Ghosts in masks) festival in Dansai, northern Thailand, which was a great success in all senses and a terrific, if occasionally surreal, way to spend a weekend.
Dansai is a small village in the Loei Province. A village to which, I’m sure, the term “sleepy” could be accurately applied for most of the year. However, a lunar festival every year in June/July sees the town turned upside-down into a strange underworld where ghostly figures dance through the streets and young girls are chased with over-sized phallic weapons. I’m tempted to say it’s like Basingstoke on any Saturday night but I’m trying to keep the blog professional so I’ll resist that obvious comparison.
Phi Ta Khon is a curious blend of Buddhist and Animist traditions and although the purpose of the festival is to enable the villagers to obtain merit, thereby improving their chances of reaching enlightenment, there is much merry-making in the process and a great deal of fun is had by all.
Teams of colour-coordinated ghosts dance in the main square, their energy fuelled by the distorted, bass-heavy music from the on-stage band and a mix of beer, brandy and energy-boosting drinks.
Like many similar festivals around the world, the fertility element is big. Whopping in some cases! Ghosts carry swords with phallic handles, hang large fruity balls in-between their legs and tie cow-bells and empty tin cans to their waists. The more ingenious ones have adapted the phallic symbols they brandish to include a trigger which makes it come alive, all the better to scare the local girls with.
The dancing ghosts proceed to the Buddhist temple on the second day and two giant ghosts appear, one man and one woman, they chase each other around the temple, pausing only to dance suggestively with anyone brave enough to get close.
If you don’t have a ghostly costume then mud alone will do. This local girl was part of the procession to the Buddhist temple.
The dancing continues throughout the day and a carnival atmosphere carries all the revellers into and beyond nightfall. The only non-participants are the Buddhist monks who watch the festivities through windows in the temple. I couldn’t say whether they were wishing they could be included or if they were grateful to be in the safe sanctuary of the temple but they were certainly captivated by the lewd goings-on.
Outside the temple, the women elders of the village sit on a wall and watch the events unfold with a kind of detached amusement. But when the rhythym reaches their preferred tempo, they too get up and dance with elegantly considered, gentle movements.
Unfortunately, this photographer’s dancing efforts were greeted with some derision. Apparently, I was putting too much energy into it and, if my Thai language skills are correct, this woman voiced concerns that I might be having a seizure.
The partying continues into the night and moves back into town where dozens of food stalls serve an impressive range of foods to the hungry hordes. Nobody stops dancing though and the funniest thing I have seen in a long time was the cooks jigging along beside the ghosts. I don’t think there was a single one of them that wasn’t roaring with laughter so infectious that I had to increase the shutter speed on the camera to compensate for the giggling. You can read a hundred books on photographic technique and I bet that none of them will mention that exposure-compensation requirement.
It was a terrific weekend and I’m grateful for the company of photojournalist Jane Iverson who shared the drive up and back to Bangkok with me.