Saturday, February 03, 2007

FACES & PLACES

Budding warriors !

These schoolboys in Mae Chaem of Chiang Mai Province were preparing to perform at a reception for a journalist group visiting their home town recently. The kids were dressed like traditional swordsmen, each wearing a red vest and supporting tattoos. Of course, the sacred ancient scripts you see on their person were not real but written with ink, but they still did the trick, turning them into seemingly awesome warriors.

Fascinated, I visited their school. The boys there were taught sword dancing and girls folk dancing as part of the curriculum to familiarise them with their cultural heritage while still young.

The sword dance is a vanishing Lanna art. First, the boys are trained in body movement but as they grow they learn to fight with bare hands and eventually with swords.

According to their physical instructor, a seasoned fencer was invited to teach the boys, who are also shown video clips of martial arts. The net result: the boys ended up picking bits of what they learned from the teacher and what they saw on the video and created their own movements.

Meeting locals makes your travels even more enriching. If you have interesting photographs of such people and a memorable experience to share with readers, email them to pongpetm@bangkokpost.co.th.

The photos must be sent as jpeg files (at least 1MB in size), and the text doc files. Horizons reserves the right to select and publish the photographs.

Bangkok Post
Friday February 02, 2007

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