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Phetchabun Funeral By Wayne Kerr

Life is full of surprises. There I was fresh back in Thailand from Vietnam, had started this thread, and was looking forward to a peaceful weekend friggin around on the net. Next thing I know my wife’s grandma kicks the bucket and we were off to Petchabun Province for the funeral. She was 97 years old and this is the third time she died in the past year - the two other times she woke up a few hours after being pronounced dead by the local doctor.

I always thought she was from Lopburi as this is where she had lived for a long time, but after her two recent near death experiences she instructed her daughters to take her back to die in her home province of Petchabun. Seemed to do the trick but as you can imagine the hot gossip at the funeral revolved around whether she was “playing dead” or not. There was lots of knocking on the casket and checking her wrists for a pulse etc.

The jury is still out, my wife reckons she could feel some life in her, but by the look of her in the casket she was well had it in my eyes. Although when I think about it she did look pretty much the same as other times I’d seen her sleeping. The Thais love taking photos of deadies, my wife even took some, but in respect for the dead and all that I won’t post them here.

The funeral was pretty much the same as other central Thailand funerals I’ve been too. Monks come the night before the cremation and say some prayers and chant a bit and everyone gets roaring drunk and plays poker next to the casket into the wee hours of the morning. Then the monks come in the early afternoon, more chanting and prayers, and the casket is taken around the cremation pyre three times, and some coins are thrown out for the kids to chase. Some local officials pay their respects, we normal people go up and put some flowers on the body and pay our last respects, then it’s into the burner and that’s it. I’m sure there’s a hell of a lot more too it, but that’s the take from a cultural imbecile like me.

^ This was the head Monk - in this photo he was joking with the crowd by asking Mrs. Kerr and co if they’d kept a regular check on her pulse to make sure she was really dead.

^ This a scene I snapped whilst grabbing a few spare chairs for the monks that turned up late. My wife’s family isn’t well off by any stretch of the imagination but they wanted to send off the oldest member of their family in style. Their goal was to get 99 monks and 106 turned up – they were chuffed. The chanting from a group like this in the small temple was awesome. I’ve heard that some funerals get several hundred monks – can’t imagine what the chanting would be like then.

^ A nice scene at the end of the day Here’s a video showing the casket being taken up to cremation pyre and the chaos when they throw the coins out for the kids to chase. Anyway sorry to side track things here and I hope the next post will be more on Phu Quoc.

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