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Thursday the 9th of October, being the end of Bhuddist lent, saw the annual running of the Chonburi Buffalo Races.
This traditional event commemorates the time when Chonburi city was the only place in Thailand to stage races in which local farmers brought their buffalos to the temple in order to ride them in races against their neighbours.
Nowadays the event is staged at a specially prepared arena in front of Chonburi town hall, Chonburi being situated on the main highway between Pattaya and Bangkok, roughly about halfway between the two.
We therefore left Pattaya around 10 o’clock and arrived at Chonburi town hall about an hour later.
After parking our car and crossing the road, we found ourselves at the entrance to the site and walking through (no fee) first encountered several of the surrounding attractions.
There was a Thai boxing ring where bouts were staged throughout the day, and an open-air market where all manner of goods were for sale as well as various games of chance, such as throwing darts to burst balloons and win prizes.
 Further on there was a large stage on which a band was performing and later on a beauty pageant took place (apparently its origins being the ‘Farmers wives parade - although most of these ladies seemed much too young and attractive to be mere farmers wives).
Just before the main arena were a couple of tall poles which young boys were attempting to scale in order to seize currency notes that had been placed higher up. We later discovered that the poles had been greased to make the task more difficult.
Passing on from this we arrived at the side of the field where the actual races were taking place, and in spite of the large crowd, managed to find a suitable spot to spectate and also take some photos.
The races had already been in progress for several hours and it appeared that each race consisted of 5 or 6 buffalos with their riders mounted, galloping from the start line at one end of the field to the finish line at the far end. Each buffalo had been assigned a number and this was hung from it’s neck, and we noticed that on each succeeding race the next 6 numbers in sequence took part.
The ground itself had already become very muddy and churned up and got progressively worse as the day progressed, in spite of the weather which remained dry and sunny.
But this was not the h ardest part for the riders, that appeared to be getting on their mount and then firstly staying on it long enough for all other contestants to similarly mount their steeds, and secondly not falling off during the race itself.
For the first reason it quite often took some time to get all the riders ready to start and several times one or more of the buffalos would shed it ’s rider and gallop off down the course by itself. It then had to be retrieved and returned to its rider to try again.
We watched quite a few races.sometimes seeing quite a closely fought contest and other times seein g only a single rider complete the course, the others falling off into the mud.
But all took it in good spirit and we noticed the same jockeys coming back again several times to ride the remaining buffalo s.
How the overall winner was to be determined remained a mystery as by the time the number of buffalos that had competed rose to over 100, we decided we had seen enough.
 Making our way out we passed a mini-train which was taking small children round a circular route and just past this were a couple of dodgem car stages, where older children were obviously learning the skills necessary for future driving on the roads here - bumping was definitely allowed.
Leaving them to their fun we again passed the main stage where the beauty contest was still in full swing and where a lady from the tourist bureau gave us a pamphlet written in Thai and surprisingly good English which described the origins of the event and also listed the program for the day. It would seem that they are attempting to promote this now as a tourist event.
Just before returning to our car, we stopped at a stall to buy some drinking water, but found our offer of payment refused and we were even given cups and ice all free of charge.
Would that all sporting events were so welcoming and inexpensive, not to mention such good fun and good spirit..
A thoroughly enjoyable and definitely different day out.
To view any of the above photos in full size, just click on it.
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