Day 286: Single's Night

We decided we didn't really want to do anything too involved on the island, and we began the morning by opening the door, taking the 3 steps to the lake and jumping in for a swim. In the little cottage rooms above and beside us were 4 young Finnish men who were hanging out and swimming around, and we chatted with them for awhile.

After drying off we walked around the loop on the peninsula that makes up Tuk-Tuk, looking for food and for a place to use wifi since our guest house had none. Periodically through the day we'd see young men dressed up in suits with ties and elaborate plumed hats and sashes on, and by talking with a few of them we learned that there was a big festival going on in town in the evenings. Apparently once every 5 years all the young single men and women (and their families, and people just looking to party) from all the neighboring villages come for a festival/dance, basically to try to hook up with a prospective spouses. This sounded too culturally weird/awesome to pass up, so in the evening we met up for dinner with our Finnish friends (they had been on the island quite a bit longer, and took us to a much better restaurant than the earlier ones we'd had), then followed the sound of music through the city and the road away from the buildings of the town.

It was made pretty clear to us that we weren't to dance, and we sat to the side with what was presumably family members and well-wishers. Since none of what was going on was in english it was a bit hard to follow at times, but there was an MC who would walk around talking, and then the band would break out into the song. I say -the- song because there was only one. By the end of two days of this festival I got quite tired of it. I don't really understand why they have a large band to play the exact same traditional song over and over and over. They should just tape it and save some money next time. Anyway, once the music was going the two groups (male and female) would start dancing and slowly approach each other, dance a bit, then break back apart to their seperate groups when the music stopped. This happened over and over, and I guess eventually some prospectives paired up. In the next phase, All these matched pairs lined up facing a group of family members in an opposing line, and there was a sort of weird tug-of-war dance where one side would force the other side backwards, then they would reverse. All the singles who failed to meet anybody got to stand around feeling left out.

Afterwards the dance broke into more of a free-for-all (still the same song). A few of the Finns stuck around but most of us headed back to our sheds for the night.