Last Sunday, late afternoon. I took the express boat from Saphan Taksin to Rachawongse pier, and walked in the direction of Yaowarat Road to watch the spectacular performances celebrating Chinese New Year festivities - and they were spectacular, when I eventually reached them, but the festival beckoned from every side-street on the way, so I digressed and dawdled the last of the daylit hours away. A shrine tucked down one soi, bright and crowded. A covered market of dried fruits, gold nugget-shaped chocolates, sweets inside golden fish, with people heading further into the gloom of stalls, towards a temple. A little street with food carts, a woman stirring peanuts in a great roasting-pan, coffee stands.
The main road, heaving with crowds, hung over with red lanterns and yellow banners, lined with food stalls (20-30 baht a portion for everything I sampled). Men and women went about with huge bunches of novelty balloons, toy drums, dragon puppets. I reached the south end of Yaowarat as it got dark, walked under a glowing canopy of lanterns, saw a troupe of flashing snapping lion-dancers perform in a small crowd-clearing, came at last to the stage by China Gate. The acts included opera, acrobats, dancers from all over China, puppets, drumming - and, incongruously, some Thai pop stars that the audience screamed and waved flashing signs for. The performance that sticks in my mind most was a group of dancers in elaborate Chinese Opera gear, whose masks changed multiple times throughout, going from red to green or a feline-featured full-face mask to a black and white half-mask. The changes seemed instantaneous - perhaps a mechanism in their costume that pulled each face away too fast for us to notice? I don't know, but it was amazing.
Yaowarat Road is always worth a visit, especially at night with its neon and street food, but at festival-times it's nothing short of magical.
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