July, Bastille Day in France, National Day Fete in TahitiPrepared by Harold Stephens
Travel Correspondent for Thai Airways International
Last week I mentioned I would continue this week with a visit to the Khmer ruins in Thailand. But now I remembered, for some great festivals, July is the month for travel to Spain and to France and the French possessions like Tahiti and New Caledonia in the South Pacific.
In Spain there’s a great festival that is going on at this moment. It’s the running of the bulls in Pamplona. It’s one of my favorite festivals but unfortunately I am going to miss it this year; but I can tell readers about it.
Pamplona is an inland city on a golden plateau in the Basque country. Early in July each year there’s a celebration, the Festival of San Fermin. It lasts for a week and attracts the best matadors and the bravest bulls in Spain. The festival begins with fireworks and continues throughout a noisy week of drinking and dancing, with religious processions and special masses in the churches. And, of course, bullfights, or corridas every afternoon.
Novelist Ernest Hemingway made the festival world known, and famous, when he wrote his novel The Sun Also Rises. Each morning at dawn Ernest and his young wife Hadley went to watch the bulls come galloping down the mile-and-a-half of cobblestone street to the pens at the Plaza de Toros, and the practice continues to this day. Running ahead of the bulls are many of the young men of Pamplona, wearing white shirts and red neckerchiefs, flirting with death while showing off to the crowds that they can outrun the bulls. Some, of course, can’t and they find themselves tossed into the air and trampled. Surprisingly, there are comparatively few serious injuries.
After reading Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, when I was living in Paris, I wanted to go to Pamplona. I expected the festival to be only a mere shadow of that depicted in Hemingway’s novel. Fiction at its best, but I discovered it was more than a novel. Pamplona was real, just as Hemingway described it, not only to the running of the bulls, but also to the names of the hotels and cafes, the drinks, the food, and even the reaction of the people. I swear I could see Hemingway’s characters in the faces of the people having the same fun and good times as he had. And when I looked hard, and saw the young men running down the street ahead of the bulls, I had to leap over the barrier and do the same.
I have been back since, several times, and I don’t think the tourists are disappointed. It seems they carry copies of The Sun Also Rises.
We celebrate again in Paris, but let’s begin on the eve of July 14th when the people of Paris dance in the streets. This is not a figure of speech, like “he's so happy he's floating on the clouds.” No, this is reality. Sections of many streets in Paris are roped off and people actually dance in the streets.
The reason for the fun is that every July 14th, the French celebrate the French Revolution, the storming of the Bastille in 1789. It marks the overthrow of the Bourbon monarchy and the establishment of the First Republic. It’s not only in Paris, however, where they dance in the streets. It’s all over France and all of their possessions around the world as well. In Tahiti, a French possession, they call it the National Day Fete, and it’s big time there in the islands, the biggest celebration of the year.
Royal Orchid Holidays has an excellent Paris Minibreak tour, three days and two nights, ROHS53. And for Tahiti, you can join with Air New Zealand, a Star Alliance member, for direct flights to the South Pacific.
Ironic as it may be, the Place de la Bastille, as it is today, wasn't laid out until long after the revolution. The columns we see weren't erected until 1840. But to every Frenchman the Bastille has a deep significance. The Bastille was originally built in 1370 as a fort by Charles V, where he could hide in times of trouble, and became a political prison after his death. (Its first prisoner was the architect who built it.)Five years before the Revolution, the use of the Bastille as a prison was abolished and it remained practically empty and was slated to be demolished. The garrison in early 1789 consisted of 37 Swiss soldiers and 82 other military personnel. The cannons on the towers lacked ammunition. Only three light guns in the courtyard and a few muskets on the ramparts were serviceable.
The people's attack on the fort on the 14th of July 1789 was purely symbolic. The assault lasted until five o'clock in the afternoon, when the governor surrendered the fort. He, with several officers, the Swiss Guard and the other military personnel were promptly executed.
The victorious mob crowded into the prison to find seven prisoners, consisting of four foreigners, two madmen and a count who had been imprisoned at the request of his father. They were carried in triumph through the streets of Paris. Demolition of the fort started the following day and within the year the Bastille was razed to the ground.
After the mob had demolished the Bastille, they marched to Versailles and brought the king and the queen and their followers in ox carts to the Tuilleries (in front of the present day Louvre Museum) where they were kept prisonners until guillotined.
The stage for the Terror was in the present Place de la Concorde which, two hundred years ago, was called the Place de la Revolution. It was there the guillotine was erected and here over 13,000 heads fell, including those of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette. A lady named Madam Defarge, it’s said, sat here knitting, counting heads as they rolled, adding a stitch each time the blade dropped.
Standing today on the very spot where the guillotine once stood, there is a 70-foot tall, 230 tonne obelisk, a 3,500-year old gift presented to France in 1829 by Mohammed Ali, then ruler of Egypt. If you stand in front of the Louvre in the Tuilleries Gardens, you can look west and see Le Petite Arc de Triomphe, the obelisk in the centre of the Place de le Concorde and the grand Champs Elysees all the way to the Arc de Triomphe. On July 4th, the date of America's independence, the obelisk casts a shadow across the Place de la Concorde to the U.S. Embassy. Aside from dancing in the streets, there will be fireworks, festivals and balls all over France, and in Paris a splendid parade down the Avenue Champs Elysses.
And then there is Papeete on Tahiti during the French Bastille Day Celebrations. Now there is the place. When the Tahitians celebrate, they celebrate in style. Try to picture the scene. You’ve heard of the Mardi Gras in New Orleans, and certainly of the one in Rio. What about the Beer Fest in Munich? We might even want to consider the Olympics, with the exception of the Winter Games. Take all these activities, roll them up together, and what do you have—The National Day Fete in Tahiti. It is, without doubt, the grandest festival in all the South Pacific, one that encompasses everything from canoe and outrigger racing to javelin throwing, and from wild, savage dancing contests and singing himenes to plain and simple, good old-fashioned hell raising and party carousing. There’s probably more Hinano beer drunk during the seven days the Fete is held than there is all year-round in the islands.
The Fete is more than fun and games. It is smells and sounds as well. The air is filled with the fragrant scent of flowers, frangipani and the Tiare Tahiti, and nearly everyone, man and woman alike and children too, wear flowers—around their necks, wreaths on top their heads, tucked behind their ears. They parade the streets, strumming guitars, with arm loads of flowers for friends they greet.
And there are the sounds, familiar only to Tahiti. It’s the thunder of shark skin drums and wood blocks. Islanders from all the outlying islands come to compete in dancing. For weeks before the competition they practice, day and night, and the sound of their drums, like the scent of flowers, permeates the air. The island rocks with the sound of drum.
The dancing competitions are the most compelling. Teams, with anywhere from six to two dozen dancers, begin practicing months in advance. Competition is fierce, and for the spectators it’s exciting. Competitions are held at night, for six straight nights and on the seventh night the final six teams compete.
Every island in French Polynesia, and even some from as far away as the Cook and Tonga Islands, sends its teams, their best dancers and javelin throwers, their best drummers and outrigger crewmen and women, their best singers and cyclists.
For many of these islanders it is the first time they have been away from home and they take the competitions seriously. They arrive on copra boats and trading boats, aboard private yachts, island ferries and French Navy gun boats.
Thai Airways will take you in time for the Bastille Day festivals in France and you can hop a New Zealand flight across the Pacific to Tahiti. It may be your first, but it won’t be your last
Next week we will resume our discovery of Khmer ruins in Thailand.
QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
Q.Dear Mr. Stephens,
We would like to visit Ayutthaya and we see on the map that it is on the Menam River. Are there ferries that run up river from Bangkok to Auytthyha? How long does it take? Can we come back to Bangkok by air? Marylyn Hodges, Miami, Florida.
A.Dear Ms. Hodges,
There is no ferry service from Bangkok to Ayutthaya but there are cruise boats and many converted rice barges, that make the trip. Travellers go by boat and return by bus. Lunch is served aboard. There are also overnight boat trips, and these really are first class. I would suggest that you check with Royal Orchid Holidays at your nearest Thai Airways office. ROH does have overnight river trips. Another note, you are probably looking at on old map. The name of the river is the Chao Phraya River. “Menam” in Thai means “river”. -HS
Harold Stephens
Bangkok
E-mail: ROH Weekly Travel (booking@inet.co.th)
Note: The article is the personal view of the writer and does not necessarily reflect the view of Thai Airways International Public Company Limited. | 
