15th April, dunno wat to put here cause i have no time to type!

14th April, 泼水节is here!

11th April, 6354km.

one of the 云南十八怪 - the pipe to smoke cigarrette...

a 傣族 wedding ceremony. interestingly, the groom is holding a tray of cigarettes for guests to take when they enter. LOL?!

hehe =D the village "toy" that everybody hugs because he's so very cute!

watermelons in the morning, afternoon, night, just about every time of the day because they have so many watermelons!

frying tea leaves because the machine is spoilt! pretty hot and not as easy as it looks...

trying to find the hole in my tube to patch it. luckily the puncture happened when i am resting at this place and not on the road or it will be more troublesome =D

7th April, evening party =D

 

 

 

the master chef at work frying a huge pot of food for tonight's party

while the men were at the riverbed killing and dissecting chickens and cow, the womenfolk were in the home preparing dinner for tonight's party! yummy =P

ok, actually its womenfolk plus 1 man who can cook very well...

dun think its easy to stir this huge pan of food

around 5-6pm, the guests started to stream in. most of the women wore their traditional costumes but almost none of the men wore their traditional clothes. i found this the same almost everywhere i went, most of the men dun really wear it often whereas the women wear it almost everyday. hmmmm...

anyway, 靖南's dad set up a table along the road jus before entering the home and guests who entered registered with him. they also have a similar practice as singaporeans where they give hongbaos except that they jus give the money directly and dun wrap it inside any red packets. there seem to be an unsaid "glass floor" and everybody paid at least 50 yuan, which also happens to be the mode (most ppl gave this amount) highest i seen is 100yuan and from the short amount of time i stayed there, it seems everybody gave either 50 or 100 haha. not much differentiation there...

anyway, 靖南's dad recorded all the names of guests and the amount of money they contributed. talked to them and from what i gather, they treat this as kinda an investment/savings account. so if i contribute 100yuan to them for their "housewarming", the next time i marry and have a wedding dinner, they will contribute 100yuan or mayb slightly more adjusted for inflation. at least thats what they told me they felt about this practice... not sure if other villagers feel the same way?

here comes the guests! the red book is the record of the guests and their hongbao amounts

cute gals in traditional costumes

the 1st floor...

even though today is the housewarming, there are still alot of things that are unfinished and still needed work eg the 2nd floor is still not completed and has not been partitioned into rooms yet so it is jus one big empty space above.

the "banquet" spilled over into the house on the right because there wasnt enough space to accomodate everybody. they invited about 400ppl but not sure what the actual turnout is...

there are about 8 dishes so there are 8 men who walk around the tables carrying pails of the food and they will scoop out the food and put it on bowls on the tables. all the men are villagers so no need to hire waiters!

the pail of food!

most of this food comes from the cow in the morning =D minced beef, intestines, beef, anything to do with cow haha

shit, i look damn greedy but its really delicious so who cares =P

the finished roof. this is what the typical 傣族 home looks like

7th April, bull slaughtering!

靖南 's 舅舅 happened to be building a new 傣族 home and the "housewarming" is on the 7th. according to chuan, every villager who builds a new home will have to invite friends, family and everybody in the village to his home for a dinner, kinda like a housewarming party...

every household in the village is supposed to contribute a person to help with the housewarming event, men will be helping to slaughter the cow, chickens or help out with any last minute touch-ups to the house etc while the women will help to prepare the food for the event.

anyway, the cow slaughtering took place in the morning at the river! there were about a dozen plus men at the river of all ages, and obviously the old were more experienced but the young were much stronger and fitter. here goes the pics of the cow slaughtering!

the pails of drained cow blood...

adding fuel and preparing the blowtorch to torch the cow

all work and no play is boring so they stopped every now and then to smoke a couple of cigarettes and to barbecue chicken meat to eat =D

the dead cow by the river bed  and the trail of blood it left behind...

they also had a huge oil barrel with water inside, and they left it on top of a fire to boil the water. the wood for the fire came from the unwanted wood/wood shavings used to build the home and it has been boiling there for quite some time. when the water is boiling hot, some dude went over to scoop a huge pail of the boiling water and poured it all over the cow's body and the other men would scrape off the fur of the cow with their knives or some sticks. the key is to quickly remove the fur once you pour the hot water over it, because if you wait too long, it will be very difficult to remove the fur so there are alot of guys crowding around the cow, removing watever fur they can get their hands on..

pouring hot water over the cow to make it easier to remove the fur/hair/hide/whatever you call it...

the experienced old man preparing the blow torch to flame the cow

at the same time, an old man was preparing the blow torch and when most of the fur is removed, he will torch the cow until the body turns brownish. at the same time, they will also scrape off any remaining fur/whatever stuff stuck on the body.

flaming and scraping...

here comes the chickens!

while they were still messing around with the cow, somebody delivered a few baskets/coops of live chickens and those not messing with the cow would grab a couple of chickens and slaughter them before proceeding to defeather the chicks, clean it, boil it, flame it, remove the organs etc...

jungle confidence course village style... grab the head and feathers, slit the throat, drain the blood, prepare for dinner =D

some guys washing the chickens in the river while a guy continued messing with the cow and others in the far end preparing the tractor to bring the cow back.

defeathering the chicken before they put it close to the flame. not sure what they do it for but they only do it for a short while. think its prob easier to remove the feathers when it is warm bah?

dunking the chicken into the huge oil barrel of boiling water...

the chicken-nator hard at work dissecting every possible part he can find...