Making Bai Sri in Ban Phu📍

Bai Sri is a beautifully layered ornamental decoration made from Tani (type of banana tree) banana leaves. The tiered ornament of flowers and banana leaves is a central piece for the Bai Sri ceremony performed to bestow peace and prosperity to a person or place.

We spent an afternoon with Mey (mother) Boon Tuay teaching us to make Bai Sri: the banana leaf tiered ornament used for ceremonies.


What started out as "oh this is fun" slowly turned into an exhausting meticulous process of measuring, cutting, folding, twisting and doing it all over again.

I had not realized the amount of patience and precision that goes into making the sacred ornament. Mey kept smiling as I folded, accidentally tore my banana leaf and ended up doing it all over again...several times. I then just decided to watch the master carefully fold and create the elaborate shapes with her fingers with so much grace and poise.
.
"People buy in city," she says, "here we make." It apparently takes four whole hours to create a three-tiered structure and here I couldn't even finish a tiny part of it during the whole afternoon

#thevillagestory #villagelife #banphu #mukdahan#thailandvillageacademy #baisri #bananaleaf #ceremony #holy#amazingthailand #travel #thailand #yeewong

Comments