I think my last post was right before the first semester final exams.  That’s because I no longer had easy access to a full desktop computers once exams had started for the other students.  I stayed home and was SUPER lazy for all of exam week.  After that we had the holidays, 7 days of which were spent “practicing for sport day”.  I can fill another post on that alone easily so look for that later.  I was sent my quarterly report right before that week and a half, but since sport day training is an event deliberately constructed to leave students too exhausted to study for other school’s high school entrance exams, I feel a lot less guilty about sending it in late.  I made plans with some of my friends for after exams; with one group I was going to go to the palace and then tour around to some other particularly picturesque parts of Bangkok.  Our plan was to spend all day doing this, but unfortunately the night before this, the king of Thailand died. Because of this, going to the palace was definitely out of the question since it was being used for the funeral ceremonies, and frankly no one in Thailand wanted to go out and do anything after that.

I found out from my host mom, about 2 hours before the news was officially released.  She had asked me to come to the bank with her that evening and about 20 minutes after she had said we would leave she knocked on my door, looking shell shocked, and told me “Actually, my king is dead.  This makes all Thais very sad.  Please be ready to go soon.”.  It took me a moment to realise what she was saying, and I was shocked that she would still be going to the bank in light of what had happened.  I think she may have been using the normalcy of the task to help deal with the shock she was in.  I actually had been fretting about this happening, because the king didn’t seem like he would still be alive next July after I left from everything I’d heard. As of then I had had no exposure to Thai mourning customs, and the internet only goes so far, especially when it comes to someone who the Thais respect as nearly a god. I had been trying to find a casual and non-disrespectful or rude way to ask about this for a while, but I’m pretty sure that it is considered bad luck in Thailand to speak of a living person’s death. Because of this I hadn’t yet asked, and now everyone was in extreme grief and I still couldn’t ask. I tried asking many times, a half hour after it had happened, an hour, etc. but my host mom was unable to answer. I conferred with the other exchange students in my district, thinking we could all collaborate on the information gathering and by doing so not burden our host parents with a full on quizzing right after their hearts had been broken.  Good in theory, but not good in practice.  I now know that there were certain aspects that were dictated by the government, and certain that were personal choice.  Since we have very little documentation of the mourning process for the previous king, the government had to do their best to guess and decide.  All outings already planned were cancelled, everything for the next year must be in less bright colours and must be less loud.  Weddings and other parties in the next month must be cancelled, and after that time they are still requested to play music in speakers instead.  All government workers were required to wear all black for 30 days and then either their uniform or black and white for one year after the day of the kings death. The government asked at first that everyone wear at least black and white for 30 days, preferably black, with jeans being the exception, but then changed that several days later because prices for black and white clothing rose drastically, and not everyone would be able to reasonably afford that. They said that people could instead wear a black ribbon on their left breast or shoulder. My host parents both decided that they would wear as close as possible to all black for 100 days. It really depends on the person. This meant that when I was conferring with the 30 other exchange students, we got about 10 different answers. All of whom thought they were answering the question of what should that exchange student do in their household, I presume. I’m still not entirely sure what I should follow- the mandatory period is over, and he wasn’t my king, but I did and do respect him greatly. Also my host parents wont be wearing colour for another 2 months. I think that for now I will wear either black and white or black and white with a little bit of pale or dark colour. Black pants and a dark green shirt for example. I think almost everyone in Thailand is still wearing black or white though, but some have added navy or peach or grey. It definitely isn’t anything like the sea of colour I was expecting.