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This Sand Building is a tradition that is set up by Saensuk City municipality held on the 16th and 17th of April every year. The goal of this tradition is mainly to conserve the ancient tradition as well as to promote the culture to the citizens to portray traditional activities of Bangsaen community. Private companies as well as a government sector have joined hands to set up this amazing festival at Bangsaen beach. Activities in the areas include the competition of sand formation, making merits, paying respect to Buddha, splashing water to each other, competing on traditional sports such as tug of warm, sticky rice eating, Sepak Takro sports, oysters striping and so on.
For Thai citizens, “Wan Lai” is a tradition that people will build up a religious pagoda in temples as they believe that this pagoda is an important sculpture and every temple needs to have it. There are every size of the pagoda - from large to small. The large ones are usually built behind the temple or sometimes built inside the temple in order to contain “Buddha Relics”. When people come to pay respect in the temple, they get to pay respect to the Relics as well. This tradition has been carried out since Sukhothai was the capital of Thailand and considered to be one of the merit making activities for Thai New Year.
Details of building the pagoda in the New Year festival are as follows. First of all, Buddhists need to carry sands to set up a tall stack and use the help of water and wood to build it then they will contours the pagoda and put various ranges of flags with an exquisite decoration and create 84,000 stacks to match the “Thammakhan”. When this is done, monks will perform some religious rituals and then there will be a feast given to monks as well as people who attend this event. The leftover
of sands will be used to help additional construction of the temple.
Usually after the Thai New year it will come the rainy season and temples that are located near rivers, sea or a pond will set up
a traditional activity regarding the customary of sand and water. They will put all the sands available near the borders and corners of every river, sea and pond. This is because when the rainy season comes, the level of water in the river will rise up and flood lands. It does help to keep the place clean as well as smoothen the flow of waterways. Also in this tradition, people will build up a religious pagoda as well as a feast to monks and they believe that these activities can help entertain and co-operate people in the community.
As time passes by, things that are mentioned above are changing due to the rapid growth of the economy. Previously, people had to help each other to carry a couple bag of sands in to the temple to build the pagoda. These days, cars are being used to carry and deliver instead. The religious sand and water pagodas are fading away and many temples now do not have such sculpture for people to worship anymore. Thus, from the full name of “Phra Saii Naam Lai” - which means the building of religious sands and water pagodas - is now shortened to be called “Wan Lai” to help save the beautiful tradition. Saensuk City municipality has named this tradtiion as “Ngaan Kor Phra Saii Wan Lai”.
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