A bunch more pictures have emerged from our members during the "Loy Katoey" celebration that we recently had and I wanted to share some of the better ones. Just as a refresher the word "Katoey" in Thai is a ladyboy and they are an accepted part of society and have been for hundreds of years. On this day we cross dress and have some fun with it. We are not offending anyone because this is not USA and people aren't always looking for a reason to be upset. People here, including actual ladyboys, appreciate this and think it is great.
The ladies of the Hash get in on the action as well. Cross dressing as a man or as they call it here "tomboy" is not as common as Katoeys but they do exist.
A big part of our community isn't just running, but it is also getting together for relatively massive social events that normally involve a bunch of booze. It is not required that anyone drink and many of our members are sober, this is fine and nobody will ever pressure a non-drinker into doing so.
A lot of this is actually inspired by the "Red Dress" run that happens all over the world in Hash Chapters and it is based around a run that happened on the part of woman many years ago who was late to a Hash event but was so dedicated to the cause that she completed an entire run in the formal red dress that she had one before arriving. We celebrate just about anything in the Hash, so now this event is celebrated in nearly all Hash chapters around the world, annually.
Some of the men put in quite a lot more effort into their costumes than others, and the girls seem to get a real kick out of putting makeup on them since obviously, this is not something that we are capable of doing very well on our own.
Some of our members were actually a little too cute in their costumes and well, just like anything else we punish them for this. It doesn't take much to get into "trouble" in the Hash and it is all part of the fun.
Next week we will return to normal running with regular outfits, which are still silly but nothing quite like this. Needless to say we didn't have any newcomers for this event because they would probably get the wrong idea about what we actually do here. This is a once a year thing and now we will return to our regular runs which of course anyone is welcome to come and join us on. You can find the full details at our barely functioning official website.
