Thai School Sport Day Parade, Isaan Thailand.

Well time flies when you are having fun, well I have been a little busy to be truthful.

Back on December 3rd, the school had its sport day. I will not go into this as I have written about them before and my personal thoughts on it all. This is a very brief summary for anyone new and know nothing about Thai sport days.

For two weeks before the actual day, all students sit in their teams and practice repetitive chants to banging drums; these chants never change from years previous.

You have plenty of students missing from your classes as they need to practice dancing for shows and are given slips to miss classes.

The actual day is hardly any sports but a parade of costumes, dancing that can at times border obscenity for such young people.

In all it is harmless, and a bit of fun for students but for teachers, especially foreign teachers it can be frustrating and too drawn out.

Anyway below are pictures of the parade that takes place in the morning on the day. Each team puts in a lot of work for the parade; some students are up as early as 2 or 3 am to have make-up and hair done.

The day before the parade was a little amusing and I thought that it could be a little chaotic. In the morning it was announced that that all students would meet at the usual spot the local Rajabhat University at 7.30am, then a few hours later this was changed to a venue a little closer to the school.

Then at lunchtime it was announced that they would meet at Big C shopping centre at the same time and march back to the school, this was new and going to be interesting as peak hour traffic coming into town was going to be crawling along that morning.

I went to school and signed in, then I returned to Big C, which is near my house to take some pictures of the parade participants. I arrived at Big C and could not see a large gathering; there were scattered students here and there but only in small groups.

I saw a few of my students and stopped to talk to them and they asked me where everyone was, of course when I said I had no idea they started to worry. Then a car full of students dressed up went passed, so 3 students jumped onto my motorbike and we were off in pursuit.

We found the parade opposite Big C on the main road at street No 41. As you can see the students are stretched down the road blocking most of it. I am sure all the residents, especially motorist were a little shocked to awake to this.

Chayangkul Road is Ubon Ratchathani’s main street, it gets very busy and is very dangerous as people speed down it never obeying the speed limit and of course being Thai do not follow any road rules in place. Here a dog has chanced crossing the busy street, successfully.

And students were also running across the not so busy street as it wasn’t peak hour yet, many had made their way to the shopping centre that was 400mtrs from where the parade was.

And these are two of my old students, who were leading the parade holding signs stating the school’s name. I am sure this is so the passing motorists can then curse the school for holding them up without any warning.


The school band was dressed in full kit, I once tried to play the tuba back in primary school and took it home for a few weeks but gave up on it, I am sure that mum, dad and brothers were happy I did.







Above is just a few of many pictures I took. I still have many to upload and then edit and will share of the coming weeks.

Brunty