Sook San Wan Bpee Mai!!!

aka - Happy New Years!

First things first: I am not currently, nor was I ever, on fire. There was a club that caught on fire in Bangkok on New Year's Eve, but I was far from it. It really was a sad thing. I think over 60 people lost their lives in the fire, but no one in my Fulbright group was near the tragedy.

I bussed into Bangkok from Chiangrai on Tuesday night/Wednesday morning. It's about an 11 hour ride, so the night bus is the way to go. And for the equivalent of about $25-30, you can't really beat it. Sleeping is a little sub-par, but I got enough sleep to last until 3:00 in the morning on New Years.

Chike, JR, and I stayed at the YWCA hotel, which is where Fulbright put us up for Thanksgiving. It's a nice place, and the three of us split a triple room, so we kept the price pretty low - about $50 a piece for the 3 nights. The hotel is centrally located in Bangkok, but somehow manages to be a 10-15 minute walk from the sky train, which is sometimes a hassle.

New Year's Eve the guys went out to dinner at Tony Roma's with Rawi - a Thai-American from UC Davis - and his uncle's family. I ate tons of steak and ribs. And I paid for it. My stomach has accustomed itself to Thai portions consisting of mainly rice, so all the American food was a challenge for the digestive system.

After dinner we basically milled around the countdown area at Central World plaza, which was the Thai equivalent of Times Square. The "ball drop" was less droppy than I expected. In fact, the ball was stationary, but it did, conveniently, have a big clock displayed on the side. There were tons of people in the plaza. I've got to say that this is the most people I've personally ever seen in one place. And it was close-quarters. I've also never been unintentionally groped so many times in my life. But, mild complaints aside, it was cool. My view of the ball was slighly obstructed by an ill-placed palm tree, but I'm fairly certain the New Year came without a hitch.

We quickly discovered that leaving the plaza was going to be a problem. An empty taxi simply didn't exist, and the skytrain was packed. We tried walking further from ground zero, but it didn't help. So we celebrated the first hours of the New Year at a street restaurant eating some spicy beef and sticky rice. We didn't find an empty cab until about 3:00am.

Thursday we got up late and headed over to the ritzy Paragon shopping mall area. I'm not sure if I've talked about Paragon on here before, but it's a wild place. They have crazy expensive shops there, sell Lambourginis and such. In one of the malls we found a Sizzler, which I'd never eaten before, but enjoyed thoroughly (except for Chike's blatant and unabashed snatching of JR's cheesy bread). Later on we spent a good amount of money in the bookstore and went bowling on the top floor of Paragon. We met the girls for dinner at a Mexican restaurant, and, once again, I stuffed myself. It was delicious! A bar down the road had a pool table, so we rounded off a pretty full day with some billiards.

My Friday was spent at a place called the Ancient City. It's a place where they reconstruct sites from around Thailand in one plot of land. Depending on what mood you're in as you enter, I would say your opinion of the place could range anywhere between "lame" and "awesome". For us it was awesome because we rented Golf carts and we got a little rowdy with them. That's all I'll say... Then we went the the world's largest crocodile farm. I didn't enjoy this as much as I should have because I was dog tired from the cart exploits, but I had a good time.

I left for Chiang Rai again on Saturday evening. During the day, Chike and I wasted time wandering around the mall areas. I bought a pair of tennis shoes that wouldn't cut my feet open and kept myself from spending more money on books, which I consider an acheivement. I couldn't get a VIP bus ticket for the ride back home. While the 1st class ticket was cheaper, it also earned me a smaller seat beside a father and his crying young daughter. I found it easy to remain stoic during it all, though, probably because I spent my time in Bangkok like a pampered American.

New Year's was fun, in short, a good break from teaching.

I'm writing this now at a time when I'm normally teaching. For some reason over half of the school's students are having an assembly, so my schedule is shortened by two classes today! There are rumors from the Chinese teachers that tomorrow I'll be heading to another school to watch an Academic Competition. Again, just rumors, but enough to get me excited. It's not that I'm looking to get out of teaching. Just that I'm looking for a little excitement. The messed up schedule actually means that most of my classes are way behind, which is a big bummer. But, this is Thailand.