How They Celebrate Christmas at Naung Hlaing village ...

Continue from "Pilu River is One Of The Blessing For Myanmar."

After we visited Hydro power plant, we continue our journey to my friend village which is beside of Moebyel dam. It is about 2 hours drive from Law Pi Ta power plant. Along the road, we can see White cross on top of the mountains. We arrived around 3 pm in the afternoon. My friend’s parent welcome us and treat with traditional rice wine.

We chit chat with them and preparing dinner and Christmas party for tomorrow. The village name is “Naung Hlaing” and it is the other side of “Phe Khone” town. In between is Moebyael dam. The village used to celebrate Christmas on boxing day (26 December). The village have a church but the priest only visit occasionally. They open the music very loud can hear everyone from the village. On 25th December night , they also have a lot of entertainment and Christmas party at the church.

We chatting and doing traditional pork sausage for the next day. At the same time we also eat beef salad and drinking rice wine. We saw a lot of traditional rice wine pot at the back yard. When the night fall, we celebrate Christmas dinner with my friend family. My friend bring a few whiskey bottle and we have good time at night.

They have their own generator to get electricity. The sad thing was while constructing Moebyael dam all the village need to move to the higher land by government order. As I said Moebyael dam was to collect the water from Balu river to flow all the time to produce electricity but all the village do not get the electricity until now.

This Naung Hlaing village have another sad story about the Legion of Mary ministry people died while they are going for retreat at the Phekhone chuch. While they are going with the boat to PheKhone , the boat sink and 33 people lost their life from the village. Only 2 survive and they live until now. The village have memorial tomb for them beside of the church.

At that night after finish our dinner, when my friend relative go back, we go out to the open yard and watched the stars and talk about astrology. The weather was cold and the stars are very shinning. Around mid night, we went to bed and call off the day.

The next morning, when we wake up, they treat with the rice wine again and again. We visited to my friend’s uncle house which is around 200 meters away but there is no road at all. I tried to go with my manual wheelchair but I can’t push so someone need to push through the off road. When we arrive, they treat with the rice wine and to have a meal with them.

Every house have traditional pork dish ,beef dish , chicken and many more. One thing we have to eat very fast , if not the dish will be getting cold and solidified. All the meats and vegetable are organic. So we enjoy all the organic and traditional foods.

In this village, on boxing day, all houses are open house for everyone to visit each other because they are somehow related to each other. After we finish the meal at the place, we visited other houses with my friend. Same thing treat with rice wine, their tradition was need to drink at least one sip to give respect to the host.

At the third house we visit , we can’t even want to touch the rice wine and the food that they serve. Each house they produce different taste of the rice wine and dishes. So, we drink until can not drink anymore and can not eat anymore as well. We met with our old friends from Singapore and having a good time. After we visit around 5 houses, we decide to come back to our place and prepare to go back to Taung Gyi .

They give us a lot of present as they are traditional wine, pork sausage, chilli and vegetable which is very valuable to us. After we pack everything, my friend parents want us to have lunch with them but we really can’t have it anymore. So we decided to come back from the village.

After we drive around 2 hours , we arrive to Taung Gyi and we go and buy stickey rice donut for present and some local food. After shopping, we drive up to Mya Sein Taung to view the whole Taung Gyi town. Then we come back to my friend house at Phayaphyu.

I make a call to one of my childhood friend and we met each other and chat for the night.

To Be Continue.....

GO WELL....(By: PatrickSanLin. MSC 007)

Photos credit: Google Image