Halloween in Thailand
Fall leaves, pumpkin spice lattes, jack o’lanterns, the scent of cinnamon in the air. It’s my favorite time of the year. The holidays are upon us, but there is something missing. Actually, all of this is missing! While many Thais do celebrate Halloween, Halloween in Thailand is not done the same way as it is in the States. Halloween costumes? None to be found. Decorations? Nonexistent. However, this did not stop us from having a great Halloween!
DiDines, being one of the only Western restaurants in town, set out to throw a huge Halloween bash complete with a food buffet, decorations, costume contests, candy for the kids, and creepy music. A bit homesick and missing all of my favorite things about the season, I 
jumped in head first to help. One day after driving around to every store and market in town, we came home empty handed – no decorations to be had. We quickly realized we were going to have to get creative. Thank God for Pinterest!
It was not a bad thing that we had to make all of our decorations from scratch. Just a lot more work than we originally anticipated. We found one huge art/fabric shop (yellow building at the corner of Prachasamoson and Klang Mueang Rd) that supplied all of our materials. I think we made about 5 trips there over the course of 4 days. We also managed to find one tiny shop in the middle of the enormous Pratunam (market) that sold some wigs, a few masks and hats, a mustache for Charlie, and a huge spider web, which we purchased to add to our 
decor. The one thing that we absolutely could not find anywhere was paper streamers. How is that possible?
While we found a few (very few) shops with kid costumes, we could not find anything for adults. Fortunately, Charlie being the proactive planner that he is, brought his lovely Halloween costume from home. Yes, while we were preparing for this move to Thailand and condensing our lives into two suitcases, he was shoving his Mario costume in trying not to bust the seams. I made fun of him many times for this, but turns out it paid off. One green shirt and one green hat later, I was Luigi! Actually my original plan was to go as Peach, but finding a dress and all of the accessories was not only more of a headache, but much more costly.
Finding pumpkins suitable for carving was another enduring task. The pumpkins found in Thailand are not the ones we are used to – large, round and orange and just waiting to be carved. In Thailand, they are much smaller and more of a brown color making them very bad candidates for carving. But, instead of giving up all together, we carved cantaloupe instead!
In the end, it was a lot of work but DiDines threw one kick ass Halloween bash. Everyone seemed to have a good time and I don’t feel like I missed out on Halloween this year one bit. In fact, Halloween in Thailand may have been one of the best I’ve had in years! Can’t wait to see what Christmas in Thailand has in store for us.
Halloween Party at DiDiNES
About the Author Charlie and Brittany
We are Brittany and Charlie - we traded the 9 to 5 and the so-called "American dream" to live our own dream and see the world. We sold all of our belongings and left the US in August 2013. For 5 years, we lived primarily in Thailand and built our online business and location independent lifestyle while we traveled to over 30 countries. We’ve had house sitting gigs on 3 different continents and we’ve even appeared on HGTV’s House Hunters International.
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