I have spent the weekend on the island called Koe Samed for this wedding. My dad's partner's cousin decided to get hitched to non other then a Galway lad. They had some level of compromise on the wedding which to their detriment meant having two in one day. A Buddist one on the beach which lasted something like four hours, then a Catholic one in a near by town on the main land. Which also took hours since the travel delay, then it was both in Thai and English.

The first half of the day was filled with song, dance and much ritual. There was bribing of aunties to let the groom get past their gold belts and one step closer to the bride. There were chanting monks and plenty of food but we must all wait and wait. And of course there was the Irish in the back of the parade with two Irish flags.

And now to the Catholic bit. Well I suppose Eammon didn't want to get showed up with a lack of tradition and decoration so what does he do, well all the lads put on these green kilts, comando style at that. They have gold harp belt buckles, green clovers on there knee high white socks and of course wiskey flasks in their sporrans. The groom wearing the same outfit also had a green plaid shawl over his sholder with a celtic pin. I turned to one of the lads and said all innocently "do people get married wearing these in ireland?" "Oh yeah" he says. He was taken aback when I mentioned I lived in Dublin andstarted to joke that you would be lucky if they even show up in a tie in dublin. Then he quickly excused himself.

The killer part is none of them live in Ireland. Not only that they are actually second generation Irish - they all grew up in London and Manchester. The one family that did live in Mayo. They know the groom from London but have moved to Mayo since then. And it was that one guy who took off the kilt right after the wedding and said that he didn't agree with the idea but it wasn't his wedding. The other lads all from Mancester and London sat there all night drinking Jameson (me with them till 4:30am!) with their "Irish" kilts singing songs like dirty auld town. And believe me I got to see too much bollox for ones liking as we topped back one after another bottle of Jameson.

Labels: Asia, Travel