Easter in Chiang Mai

Sunrise, Easter Sunday, Chiang Mai.
Chiang Mai Community  Church joins with the 1st Church of Thailand; whose buildings we share, and we have a joint outdoor sunrise service on Easter day. The Thai Church are used to an early start, we are used to a 4.30 pm service now, and it was not easy to get ourselves organised!
We were led by the lady minister of the 1st Thai Church, who gave an animated sermon which was translated, phrase-by-phrase by one of our members. The 1st Thai church supplied the music, a modern band with a mix of instruments and a small choir.
After the service a School marching band, led a procession around the streets of Chiang Mai; waving flags and giving out invitations to anyone around the streets so early on a Sunday morning! As there is, effectively, no such thing as a weekend for most Thai people, that meant quite a lot of people.

 The congregation sang in both Thai and English, how that sounded to the passing crowds I don't know but it sounded fine from where we sat.

Behind the 3 chairs is a cavern that represents to empty tomb. This becomes the entrance to the Church over Easter, complete with a folded set of grave clothes; no angels, however, unless you count some of the children!




 The Band reminded me of many Church Parades from my dim and distant, playing my bugle badly in the Boy's Brigade Band!
They didn't suffer from the freezing lips we had but some were carrying heavy instruments in 30+ degrees. They play and march very well, they looked to be enjoying themselves too.




The uniform is the standard school uniform for many schools in Thailand.
There is an impressive range of instruments played and even a young Drum Major, twilling his mace with great flair.

We had our usual Sunday service in the afternoon and the front of the Church had been lavishly decorated with flowers, the tall pink ones in front of the pulpit are pink amaryllis
The mock-Corinthian columns are polystyrene!
Unfortunately, later that evening, whilst we were visiting the "Antique House" restaurant  Joan slipped down some steps (trying to wave to several people at once) and badly sprained her ankle; you can imagine the annoyance! We had an x-ray and treatment at one of the local hospitals and a week on, it is doing well. You certainly miss the NHS when you need to check your bank balance before you decide to visit the hospital!

Back at the Juniper Tree after the sunrise service, Simon and I cooked omelettes  as the Cooks get the Sunday off at Easter.
We are still very busy here, so we did about and hour each, before everyone had had their fill.
We cooked on a gas camping stove in the dinning room to save messing up the kitchen and the huge bowl of beaten eggs was completely gone by about 8.45.









The whole experience gave Joan and I the idea of buying our own camping stove and cooking beef steaks on our next day off. Next time we will do the cooking outside as the smell was a bit pervasive for a few days!
It wasn't an Aga, but Joan was delighted to be cooking for ourselves for once.
The pan in the picture was full of courgette and sautéed potatoes.

 One additional benefit of having extra managers at JT, is that we can devote more time to the guests. Simon was invited by one man to go fishing. As we like to experience as many of the activities we recommend to our guests as possible, he went along for a day's fishing in a stocked fishing lake. This tiddler was one of many above 20 kilos and weighed in at about 35 Kg. Sadly, you have to put them back, so no fish supper!

Turning to family matters, This new born baby belongs to Andrea's sister. (Andrea is Richard's girlfriend) Whilst Richard went off to Amsterdam on a Stag Weekend to celebrate the forthcoming wedding of one of his old school mates, Andrea went to Germany to meet Clara her first Niece.

QUESTION: What do you call your Cousin's Son's, Son?
ANSWER: Harry!

I still don't know what the correct description for the new addition to our family tree is, but Matt looks proud as punch and Alex is, we understand, doing very well too.

As the middle of April gets nearer we are more than looking forward to getting together with our families and friends back home. We fly out of Thailand next week and will be visiting around the South and North of England before getting back to look at what's been happening to our belongings in Normandy, France. We strongly suspect that much of it will have become mouse food!
We are also looking forward to seeing our latest Ebay purchase, a motor-home; which is to become our campaign bus, in our endeavours to see as many of you as is possible in our brief holiday. For now it's:  Au revoir, Farewell, Auf Weidersehen or Sawadee Krap!