Good Luck Ceremony For Temple Fair
Mr. Cherdsak Choosri, the Governor of Samut Prakan, took part in a ceremony this morning to announce to the Gods and Angles in Heaven that they will be holding the annual Worship Fair for Phra Samut Chedi. During the ceremony, they also sought good luck for the period of the Temple Fair which will take place for eleven days between 28th October and 8th November 2010. They prayed for no rain and also for it to be incident free. They offered food and drinks to the Gods. The ceremony was presided over by a Brahman priest.
After the ceremony was finished, we all boarded a cross-river ferry to go to Phra Samut Chedi on the other side of the Chao Phraya River. In this picture, you can see the new Governor of Samut Prakan Province talking with Samut Prakan’s Police Chief.
The red cloth that is normally wrapped around the Chedi has already been removed as you can see from this photograph. It is looking quite bare without the cloth. Now you can see that the temple badly needs whitewashing. However, this cannot be done without permission from the Fine Arts Department in Bangkok. A new red cloth will be wrapped around the chedi tomorrow on the first day of the Temple Fair.
Waiting for us on the other side, in front of Phra Samut Chedi, was another generous spread of food and drinks for the Gods. A similar ceremony took place here. At the end, the best dishes were offered to the Governor and then local people were allowed to take the remainder of the food.
