Diwali celebration

As per Saini's explanation Diwali is in celebration of homecoming of Ram after his exile. Those who want to know more may click this link

Anyway, I decided we'll celebrate the Diwali at Chao Mai beach doing some BBQ and relaxing in Trang province. We set off with me, Jira, Saini and Kalpu with Vivek and Rajaram to join us later.

Sunset at Chao Mai beach

17th we are busy chasing BBQ items for the Diwali celebration, we already got rockets in advance. Jira's brother N. Thuen ascertains we can fire rockets and do BBQ at Chao Wai Beach so we decide that there is where our celebration will take place. Rest of afternoon is spent guiding Vivek to Trang and he finally arrives shortly after dusk.

The beach itself is huge and very shallow. I waded out several hundred meters and was only ankle deep in the sea. It was low tide at the time so it was not surprising.

After dark we built up a fire from the drift wood on the beach so one could see what one was eating. The menu was squid, shrimp, fish and chicken with spicy Thai dipping sauce and beer of course. This time we had no Kingfisher as we had depleted our stock in the Lumut drydock.

Saini was busy guiding Vivek as he tended to get lost on the Thai highway, eventually he found the way and arrived after dark with Rajaram. They also brought the ghetto blaster so after that it was Indie pop time.

Everybody was enjoying until Saini fired off a volley of rockets. It did not take many minutes for the park wardens to come around and tell us to put out the fire and stop shooting rockets off. Oh well, we put on the car lights and slowly winded down the BBQ and headed for home.

On our way back to Khuan Kun we get permission from Jira's father to shoot off all rockets in front of his house the spirit returns to Saini, Raja Ram and Vivek. We arrive there shortly and park & start to offload rockets. Saini & Co start to shoot off a most incredible amount of incendiaries. At times it seems Vivek got an infinite supply in his car trunk but it also showed signs of coming to an end when he whipped out the "badawala" rocket battery.

Finally after abt 30min of incessant firing of rockets and the neighborhood awakened we had finished all our stuff. I said I'm going to sleep but Raja Ram said he had not had enough to eat so he needed something to eat, same as Saini and Vivek. I sent N. Thuen to get the guys fed and headed myself for some shuteye...