Holi colour party & the Issan Reggae festival.

We haven't had much time to post many blogs as we have been preparing and booking a trip away for ourselves for new years as a christmas present, rather than buying stuff we don't need. so ill be posting a few blogs over the next week of our trip but here is what we got up prior to new year.

Dec 18-22th
So over the last two weeks there has been some big party's in Khon Kaen, firstly the Holi colour party that Rainny held in Supan's House just off the Khon Kaen University. This was a first for us and something we've always wanted to try 1^st hand. If your not familiar with it it's a festival which originated in India and it is known as the festival of colours or the festival of love. It is an ancient Hindu religious festival which has become popular with non Hindu's in many parts of south Asia. 
The actual festival starts with a big bonfire the night before, where people gather to sing and dance the night away and the next morning is were it gets messy. Its basically an excuse to act like a kid again and not get in trouble :) You were handed a bag of various colours as we entered the bar and spent the next few hours dancing while covering each other in powdered paint. The whole bar looked like a rainbow had exploded. People came from a lot of the neighbouring regions just for this party, as the last time she held it, it was a huge success.

We got to meet alot more teachers and share stories of experiences so far. We had a lot of fun throwing paint powder at each other as I'm sure you can tell from the pictures. 
We have mentioned that we have met some very talented people while travelling and got to see some of them preform on the night with a few of the girls doing fire hooping while we danced til the early hours and I got to try out the light capture feature on the phone Kristine got me for my birthday which made the dancers look like they were engulfed in flames. 
  
Every one raved the next day of how good the night was and how hard it was to wash the paint out of your hair. 6 washes done and I still have multi-coloured hair but totally worth it.

Over the following week I got some good news from one of my part time jobs, that they had taken on more students meaning more classes for me bringing me up to 10 classes a week and because I've already been making lessons for my previous classes I have 10 strong, fun lessons in my arsenal, so no need to stress about lesson planning for a while. So 10 hours work a week and if I get it up to 16 I'm making the same as a full time job here working 40 hours which sounds pretty good as the other school has mentioned more classes coming up and one is at least a 6 month contract with guaranteed work.

That weekend the there was a big reggae festival being held in Khon Kaen and we had been introduced to some of the acts as they had played a mini gig in Supans house the night before the big gig. They asked Anthony up to do some acoustic songs with his guitar and he killed it as usual, he is planning on recording in the new year so will have an album out for us to share in the near future. The MC for the gig was a woman named Sista Apsara was preforming in Supans and she hung out with us for the night having a few drinks and telling us of travelling around Thailand preforming and how much she enjoys it. 

We got to meet some really nice guys and the next night we headed in to the grounds to find a a huge Chang bottle of beer at the entrance as they were sponsoring the event. 
The entrance also had some old done up cars and VW hippy vans.
They had a number of acts on playing Bob Marley covers and rock songs as well as some big reggae bands from around the world.

 Walking around the crowd was fire breathers and entertainers and the whole atmosphere was very friendly as groups of Thais would join us for a sing a long or a dance.

Our friend Gagan had brought her hoops with her and was asked to go on stage for a performance between bands and had 100's of people cheering her as she hoooped. 
There was one Thai guy who had clearly had more drink then rest of the festival combined who felt he needed to hug us all continuously for longer than any hug should go on for. we got one pic with him and Kristine but he spent most of the night trying to hug the entire crowd one by one. 

Now I say hug but that employs an embrace usually around the top half of the body, were as this dude's method was more of a grind on your leg and hump you hugger. After an hour of this his girlfriend came over and started hitting him with a rolled up magazine and dragged him away into the night which gave us a good laugh.