Saludos to the Queen during her Chinese New Year parade (23rd of January 2012/ 1st of Janurary 2555)

A night in Chinatown during the Chinese New Years celebrations. Due to Bangkok’s large Thai-Chinese population the lunar new year is celebrated on big scale with dances, fireworks, offerings and apparently the oblige house cleaning.
Chinatown is already the busiest part of town on a normal day, but this day was an even more heaving melee of people. Thanon Yaowarat, Chinatown’s main artery was closed for public traffic, decorated with big banners of good wishes in Chinese characters and everywhere the throbbing drums and clanging cymbals were heard. After 5 minutes walking we were already stuck in a crowd of elbows not being able to move because empty cars were passing through, preparations for the later Queens parade. Around 10pm everyone kneeled on the ground and we were advised to behave respectful. The Queen shortly waved in our direction from her royal cart followed by a dozen of empty cars, later on collecting the police force. In between we lost and found other parts of our group, unable to keep everyone together (which explains how we all ended up wearing neon bows), had a nice street food meal and watched a Thai part slapstick part singing tragedy/ comedy on stage. The night finished with a smiling man handing us Hinduist Ganesh figures of fake gold as a New Years present.