A King-Sized Birthday

A night view of some of the spires of the
Grand Palace in Bangkok

Wikipedia says “Bhumibol Adulyadej (5 December 1927 – 13 October 2016), titled Rama IX, was King of Thailand from 1946 until his death in 2016”. He remains Thailand’s longest reigning monarch and remains highly revered. His December 5^th birthday is linked with Father’s Day and is still celebrated.

When our calendar read December 5^th, 1982, we had been in Thailand for a little less than a month. Still Thai language and cultural neophytes we were on a quest to learn and experience as much as we could at any opportunity. We’d heard the King’s Birthday celebration in Bangkok was big so we were compelled to see what it was all about.

It was plain to see something big was happening as strings of lights were being put up on buildings all across Bangkok, but we were told the place to be for the King’s Birthday was Sanam Luang, The Royal Plaza. Sanam Luang is a large, grassy, open field in the government/royal heart of the city in the shadow of the Grand Palace and other notable landmarks. Exhaustive internet research (well, OK, I Googled it) estimates the size of Sanam Luang is about as big as two football fields and in a big event, can hold 100,000 people.

On December 5^th, fellow language students and Thailand Baptist Missionary Fellowship (TBMF) newbies Merle and Faye Brown, Kinuko Omori and Marcia and I battled the traffic and made it to Sanam Luang. In another “bumpkin in Bangkok” experience, we were dazzled by the lights along the way and all around the field. But the most impressive part of the experience was the size of the crowd and the fireworks show.

We arrived early enough we were somewhere in the middle of the field while more and more people
came. Soon the field was filled to capacity and probably beyond. Wherever we looked in any direction, it was a sea of people. Of course, all those people created a general buzz but then the national anthem was played and there was utter silence. We were impressed how that many people could be that quiet all at once.

The quiet was soon shattered though, by a fireworks show the likes of which we had never seen. It went on and on. When the “grand finale” came, it likewise went on and on. At the time, I wrote it was like the equivalent of a half dozen of the best grand finales I had seen previously all combined. Truly a dazzling display!

Wat Arun along the Chao Phraya River

With our ears still ringing, the crowd and our position in it got to be scary. We were shoulder to shoulder and hip to hip with a large portion of humanity. We had no control over our movements and had to shuffle our feet as best we could to move in the direction the crowd willed us to go. The five of us held hands and clung to each other so we could stay together. Fortunately, Bangkok Thai are used to crowds and no one panicked, pushed or fell down. Finally, in a gradual amoeba like movement we were deposited close to an edge of the crowd and we were able to get some breathing room.

The King’s Birthday on December 5^th kicks off a month of holidays and celebrating. After the 5^th, Constitution Day is on December 10^th. Then Christmas begins. Christmas isn’t an official holiday as Thailand is a largely Buddhist country, but the Christians certainly celebrate it. However, Christmas is often more of a churchwide community celebration and not so much a family time. Also, especially among the Karen villages where we were headed, churches would visit other village’s Christmas celebrations, so celebration dates were staggered throughout the month and not just on the 25th. Finally, New Year’s Day more or less completed the end of year celebrations and the lights that came on in early December for the King’s Birthday usually stayed lit all month and maybe beyond.