Sawasdee bpee mai 2011!!

Sawasdee bpee mai!! Happy New Year!!

I rang in 2011 with possibly the most interesting New Year’s party I have ever been to! It was held at Ajarn Chai’s place and approximately 40 people were in attendance – mainly his family (including his 7 sisters but don’t ask me to name them all!), Sangtiennoi, his wife and two sons (Bonus and Moses) and the younger teenage fighters from the gym, and 3 farang who are training at Baan Muay Thai (all from the same gym in California, including one girl, Anna, who is new to the sport). Being the Year of the Rabbit, everyone had on rabbit gear – ears, tails, flashing rabbit pins, etc. I was soon hooked up with a pink pair of rabbit ears! The evening was spent eating (awesome spread of Thai food, sushi, desserts and fruit), drinking, games, dancing, karaoke, random gift-giving (including large carrots for the rabbit in each of us), and a gift exchange. A combination of birthday party, bridal/baby shower, and New Year’s party, it was certainly animated and everyone obviously had a great time!

After some prompting, I agreed to try my (awful) singing voice at the karaoke – for the first time in my life I might add!! But I figured that really, no one was going to notice how bad I am! My musical skills stop at playing instruments, certainly not to singing! So I agreed to sing Billy Joel’s “Piano Man”, choosing something I at least knew from the limited English repertoire. Yup, it was bad! But I hung in there. Even got tipped 200 baht, although that might have simply been to shut me up before the neighbourhood cats descended on the party!

One of Ajarn Chai’s sisters decided to teach Anna and I how to do traditional Thai dance. That at least was a little more successful than the karaoke! Although my fingers do not bend in the same ways that theirs do.

It was definitely an amusing evening. Not speaking Thai except useless things like numbers, days of the week, food items, etc., it was impossible to grasp what was happening when rules of games, etc., were announced over the huge sound system. Every so often, someone would come on the mic and everyone would scream, jump up off their chairs, and start turning chairs upside down, looking underneath! Not sure what they were looking for, but there was never anything under my chair(s)! But dancing and laughing are universal languages so it was still great fun.

After ringing in the New Year, watching some of the fireworks from further off, some more frantic dancing, and another round of beer shots, it was time to head home. I got a ride back to the gym with Sangtiennoi and Pouk in the gym van. Getting back here, I discovered I was wired wide awake! A combination of drinking Pepsi late in the evening and also all the partying I suspect.

I finally fell asleep around 3:45am this morning and thus didn’t really see “morning”! I finally got my lazy butt out of bed around 11:45am and decided that I had to get out and do something so decided to head downtown. Rather than spending $20 to get back and forth to Bangkok by taxi, I took the cheap (and more scenic) route – drove my motorbike to Nonthonburi pier (20 km) and then took the boat all the way to near Khao San and walked from there. 30 baht in gas, 28 baht in boat tickets, so for $2, I was able to get downtown and back – perfect! I was feeling like something non-Thai for lunch/supper so after a few errands, including finding bug spray with 50% deet (many mosquitoes at night where I am), I headed to a pseudo-turkish place which advertised shawarma. It turned out to be more of an Indian curry, but with the hummus it was a change from rice which I was happy with.

Bong-bong is a much happier fish these last few days. My new coffee-friend at work, Lek, managed to get me an entire bottle of live mosquito larvae from near the museum. Siamese fighting fish love mosquito larvae! The poor guy wasn’t eating the pellet food and I was getting worried. But he’s quite happy to hunt for swimming larvae each day.