The highlight of the New Year festivities was found by following the rumbling of Chinese drums in the distance as we ventured out to dinner. On a side street near Rajaburi's open air market we found a display of Chinese acrobatics that included a four year old girl plunging to the ground from thirty feet up in the air. She was supported by invisible ropes and did not smash to pieces on the pavement. I missed this part as I was on a psychotic motortaxi ride back home to retrieve my camera. I returned in time for the high-flying dancing lion.
The boys in pink silk are playing drums, cymbals and gongs as the egg-headed fellow narrates a story to the gathered crowd. Two acrobats are hidden inside the furry lion suit. The man to the rear holds onto loops on the front man's waist. The front man operates the elaborate mechanisms inside the paper mache head to make the mouth open. The lion dances around on the pavement in perfect synchronicity with the frenzied drumming. Then the lion takes to the sky.
Twenty or so metal posts standing anywhere from four to ten feet off the ground support steel disks about a foot in diameter. The two men, as one graceful lion, dance upon this narrow footing, spinning and skipping along almost blindly, soaring up to twenty feet off the ground and landing with apparent ease on the tiny platforms.