When traveling in Thailand you will have noticed spirit houses in & near houses. Well the most houses or plots of land have one or even more spirit houses, to please the spirits of the ghost and not bother the people now living there. And of course our house has also 2 old spirit houses. One made of wood on four legs and one made of cement on 1 leg. And due to an auspicious occasion my wife had promised the spirits of our land a new house. Of course she had not told me that, but a few days later she said “I promised to build new spirit houses, is that ok?”. She knows I am not a real fan of spending money on things that are in my opinion useless. But we life together so I thought “Why not? What harm could be done?". I thought that we could just re-paint the old one's, but I was wrong. Story continuing under the photo below.
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| The young Spirit Specialist |
Well the biggest harm that could be done was that the old spirit house were actually on the wrong place and the new spirit houses had to be almost in the middle of our garden. A young spirit specialist was called and I could persuade him to announce the best place at a place that I did like, so my wife did agree.
So a new platform for the new spirit houses was build for 2.500 Thai baht, and we went on search for the right spirit houses. Well this is an all new business to me and you can choose out many different style's, sizes and colours. But 2 weeks later the new spirit houses were brought to our house for only 5.500 Thai baht. Of course we still had to buy some things to put in the spirit houses and that had be bought at a special shop. And of course the young spirit specialist had announced a special day as being the best day to bless our new spirit houses. So at that planned day the new spirit houses and all people gathering were blessed and food was given to the spirits. And of course a donation to the you spirit specialist. The food was of course later eaten by us and the neighbours.
Then what to do with the old spirit houses? Now I would going to learn why you see at some places under an old tree a lot of old spirit houses. Thai do not renovate old spirit houses, but they buy new ones. And you cannot just put the old ones aside somewhere. So we had to dig out the cement leg of the old spirit house (very heavy) and put them all on our pickup-truck to bring them to an old tree near a local temple. And that is where are now my old spirit houses.
And we lived happily together, we in our house and the spirits in their new house.
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| Food for the spirits |