Italians embracing Thai traditions
Move over New York City and Boston, Thung Wua Laen has a Little Italy too. I can’t remember if I’ve ever mentioned “the Italian village”; the resort’s name is actually Armonia Village but all the locals call it the Italian village. The founders/owners are an Italian/Thai couple who have become very good friends of ours. I have been doing photography for Ju and Devis for almost as long as we’ve lived in Thailand. Last week I had a rather unusual photo assignment: two Italian couples renewing their marriage vows with a traditional Thai wedding ceremony.
I thought you might enjoy seeing some the photographs from this Italian/Thai fusion event. You will see the early morning feeding of the monks and their chanting; water blessing by friends and officials; and visiting a temple and the sea. A buffet breakfast and dinner were also part of the days events. I’ve only put up a smattering of the photos but they are in chronological order to give you a feel for the day.
Jane Estes
John and Jane in Thailand 
What a great celebration (beautiful photos too). Hope you got time to eat as it looked very good. Was the food a mixture of Thai and Italian or all Thai? Good to see John in one of the photos. Are you feeling settled in your new home? Way too busy here but enjoying what’s left of the summer and swimming and hiking with more regularity.
Good to hear from you. Ilene
Date: Sun, 14 Sep 2014 10:02:18 +0000 To: ileneii@msn.com
Ilene Stark
September 15, 2014 at 8:58 am
Hi Ilene,
Iâm glad you enjoyed the blog; I enjoyed photographing this unusual situation. I was most happy about getting unrestricted access to shooting monks! We are at last settling in. Now if we only had our bed and garden. The bed got stopped at the border, it was made in Myanmar, when the coup came in. The coup stopped everything in an attempt to focus on the illegal travel of goods. Our bed has the proper papers but no, they are not letting anything through. So today we gave up, got our money back and went to see a local carpenter who will make our bed â wonât have it until October 9th. Oh well.
Glad to hear you are taking care of yourself and doing something besides working. Keep it up . . . well, at least til winter hits.
p.s. the food was a combination and quite good
Jane Estes
jane.estes3@gmail.com
johnandjaneinthailand.com
Thailand
Jane Estes
September 15, 2014 at 5:39 pm
Great pics!
wngreen
September 15, 2014 at 2:50 pm