Hundreds of couples exchanged vows in adventurous and sometimes very bizarre ways on Valentine's Day in Thailand. Valentine's day, originally a European love commemoration, has exploded in a obsession of popularity in Thailand over the recent years, with a massive increase in "Valentine Day Spending". Pricey red roses imported from the Netherlands are selling like noodle-soup with many orders for bouquets of 99 red roses priced at 30,000 baht (US$ 750) per bouquet, an employee from a flower shop said.
Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra even intervened in his radio address to acknowledged the influence of Western culture is starting to have over Thai youths, advising that youngsters in Thailand should take a tip from Thai traditions as well. "On Valentine's Day, love is generosity, commitment and thoughtfulness, but it is not merely sex," Thaksin said in his radio address, "thus I would like to ask all young Thai people to adopt Western culture but mixed with the Thai way of life.", he added.
13 couples put on wetsuits and diving gear to take their vows deep under the water in the Andaman sea just off the coast of Thailand's Trang province, while 7 other couples took of to the skies in hot air balloons over Northern Thailand to say "I do" on Valentine's day.
Even Thailand's corrections department organized its own epic to Valentine's day by allowing the first-ever Valentine's Day group wedding ceremony inside the prison walls.
The "prison walls cannot separate our love" ceremony in Nonthaburi province in Thailand, saw 5 convicts, all serving a 3 year prison sentence for drugs charges, marry their non-prisoner brides in the Nonthaburi jail on valentine's day.
3 couples climbed a on a high cliff above a picturesque waterfall in Prachin Buri province, east of Bangkok, and signed their marriage papers high above the ground..
Another 100 couples were married in a mass ceremony conducted by a revered Buddhist monk in Nakhon Ratchasima, and 9 couples in Nakhon Si Thammarat province exchanged their vows in front of 2000 witnesses before enduring a 5-hour trek to the top of a mountain, where they spent their one-night honeymoon.
Hundreds of couples who tied the knot on Valentine's at the Chiang Mai's district office had perhaps the most adventurous weddings of all, reportedly receiving eggs as wedding gifts from Thailand's government struggling to rid the country of the bird flu virus and convince the Thai people that poultry products are safe to eat.
But it was at Bangkok's Bang Rak district, whose auspicious name translates to "Village of Love", where love really came to the surface in Thailand, as more than 1,000 couples filed Valentine's Day marriage registrations with the district. "By the end of the day they were expecting more than 1,200 couples to register their marriage here, Bang Rak district chief Vorapoth Indulak said.
Valentine Day expectations were lost in Phitsanulok province in Northern Thailand, when hundreds of Thai couples hoping to tie the knot on Valentine's Day, were confronted with a computer malfunction that could not register their marriage and left all the broken-hearted lovebirds crying at the altar.
The online marriage registration system of central Phitsanulok province crashed Saturday, infected with a virus, on the most inopportune of wedding days in Thailand, as several hundred couples lined up outside many district offices in Phitsanulok only to learn that the central computer malfunction would leave them single for at least another 24 hours.
Phitsanulok officials were not reachable Sunday for comment, but couples expressed their indignation at being turned away on such a romantic day of the year because of a computer bug.
Phitsanulok province in Thailand is one of the eight Thai provinces which have begun using an online marriage registration system.
