A prominent feature of this celebration was the number of red turtle shaped cakes – Ang Koo.
The tiny shrine was hidden down a back street - we had to ask the driver Mardchahood to come to find it for us – it was amazing. We were welcomed like old friends into the shrine and we met two lovely Thai / Chinese people who told us what to do.
We took the turtle into the shrine and purchased 18 joss sticks and 4 candles all carefully wrapped together with paper.
We lit 2 candles at the front of the shrine from a perpetual flame.
We lit the joss sticks and placed 3 of them at the front of the shrine.
We paid our respects to the Buddah before entering, on our knees and bowing 3 times.
We lit the joss sticks, placed 3 of them at the front and entered the shrine.
We were led to a very small corridor behind the shrine where we were in a tiny corridor with tiny ornate Chinese figures – similar to those at the Chinese Temple that I had previously visited with the guest. In here there were 5 places to put 3 joss sticks in. We moved carefully through here and back to the front.
We were then led to a small ceremonial stove outside where we undid the roll of papers The papers were held together with a smaller bit of tissue paper and I can find no information as to why it is like this. Watch this space.
We lit the tissue paper from a perpetual flame and threw it into the oven.
One by one we then lit the pieces of paper from the flame in the oven – this was to create a flame to tell the spirits that we have honored them!
We were then told to stay because there was some Thai Dancing in a few minutes – we waited 2 minutes and the there was some Thai dancing – this was a truly amazing and wonderful experience for us all.
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