A fishy protest to a yummy meal

Last night, after purchasing a Christmas tree Dad and I went to a fantastic restaurant.  The restaurant is called Samboon and has very good seafood.    There was only one problem with my meal… the second I sat down in my seat the river prawns in the tank right next to me started a protest!  The little guys were swimming into the corner of the tank, bashing their little heads into the glass and staring at me with their big googly eyes.  I swear they were trying to shout at me, yelling things like…  ‘say no to seafood’, ‘save the prawns’ and ‘long live the king prawn’.

I must admit, even though I felt rather guilty I still ate their cousins for dinner (BBQ Prawns) and even though they were tainted by guilt they were very yummy!

   

A new job leads to a change of plans

For the 2nd time in my life a 2 week holiday has led to a significant change of plans!    The first time I was on a 2 week holiday in Thailand (from NZ) and got a job at the Embassy and I stayed 2 years…  this time I have managed to find a great job which will enable me to work from ‘home’ (well, Dads home), I will get to go to China and I will earn a salary!

The new job is doing similar stuff to what I was doing in NZ, I will be analysising a new system for a manufacturing company in China, doing some development of the system and then seeing it though to implementation.   I have committed to 6 months at this stage but if it works out and I enjoy it I might do this for quite a bit longer and flag the teaching in South Korea idea.

So… the new plan is now:

• Go back up north for 1 week to finish up at the school
• My friend Albert will visit from Belgium – so I will have a 2 week holiday with him at the beach
• After Albert goes, I will start working full time in my new job!  

EXCITING STUFF!!!    

The most original Christmas tree I have seen in a while…

This tree is outside the Siam Discovery Centre in Bangkok, it’s made of large plastic water bottles each with a light.   It looks very cool during the day and at night its all light up and looks very pretty.   Check out the photo:

I got my hair cut!

Seeing as I haven’t cut my hair in 4 months it was starting to look a bit lanky so I decided to get it chopped off.  I have a bit of a ‘thing’ about getting my hair cut as it is so thin that if I get a bad cut it looks terrible… Having had a few bad hair cuts the last time I lived in Bangkok I was pretty nervous about getting my hair chopped off… so, I splashed out and got it cut by a ‘Style Director’ at Toni and Guy in the city.    I was hoping to get it cut quite short (so I wont need to cut it for a while) but I was too chicken to tell the hairdresser I wanted it shorter in case she misunderstood and gave me a very short ‘pixie cut’ or something!  

Here are some before and after photos (note the spunky yellow shirt, it’s my Monday shirt but I wore it today for the Kings birthday).  Also my hair is my natural colour for the first time in YEARS – I am pleasantly surprised it is not the horrible mouse colour I expected it to be, it seems to have a reddish tint in some lights.

 

Happy Birthday to The King of Thailand

The King of Thailand turned 80 today; this is a very special occasion for all Thais as the Thais LOVE their King, its great – they totally respect him and the work he does for the country (this isn’t a brainwashed kind of love at all). Their high opinion for the king is so strong that on Mondays most Thais wear yellow shirts as a mark of respect for him. So today Cim and I wore our yellow shirts (I was given one by my host school) and headed into the city for a spot of shopping hoping to see the fireworks in the evening.

We weren’t organised enough to get near the royal palace and we missed the fireworks but we were able to join some of the festivities in the city. It was quite a moving experience to join a large group of Thais (all wearing yellow shirts of course) watching the festivities in town on a TV in the sky train station waiting in anticipation for the king to appear on TV. There was a big picture of the king, seating (the VIPs had nice seats at the front and held flash lanterns) and then the public crowded around the TV holding candles and the words to a song. After some speeches from some very important looking people everyone started singing the national anthem followed by a few royal songs (songs they sing regularly to show their respect for the king) and a new song that was written especially for the occasion.

Here are some photos we took at the sky train station and outside the MBK shopping mall:

 

I am not kidding you… all around the country Thais gathered in front of TVs to see the festivities at the Royal Palace, and to sing for the king and wish him a happy birthday.

2 weeks in Bangkok!

I am back in the city…  back amongst the hustle, bustle and pollution.   as I was entering Bangkok it honestly felt like I was entering another world as the bus drove though the city to the central bus station – this is silly really because I have only been away for a month!   As much as I love staying in the countryside, I think I must be a city girl at heart.

Anyway, I have 2 weeks in Bangkok – the original plan was to relax and maybe go to the beach.  The new plan is to relax for a week (hanging out with Cim who I met at English Camp last weekend) and then help dad with a new project for a week.   No beach for me this holiday, but its ok – Albert and I are going to some of the best beaches in the world at the end of December… I am sure I can wait another 3 weeks before topping up my tan!

English Camp at Bou Yai School

This weekend I went to help out a different school with their English Camp.   There were about 150 kids probably aged between 8 and 14 (it’s hard to guess Thai kids ages as they are so much smaller than kiwi kids!).  There were 3 westerners; me, Cim (from Iowa in the US) and Jeffory (from New York ) and a few Philippino teachers who speak English VERY well and the Thai teachers.    

  
I was told to prepare a lesson about ‘the weather’.  So I drew some pictures of the different types of weather, used the Genki English Weather Song and then played games with the kids using weather vocabulary.    The Gengki English Weather song is rather lively and has cool actions, so I taught the kids the actions and words to the song, we had a few sing offs… as there were 7 groups I did this lesson with I am pretty sure I must have sung that weather song at least 35 times!   

In the evening we helped the kids prepare a skit.   I was given a group of 22 boys and told to prepare ‘Peter Pan’.  Having never seen peter pan I knew this task would be bit of a challenge, having 22 boys in my group was even more of a challenge!!!    The boys were actually great, we picked a Peter Pan (cute kid with glasses whose English is EXCELLENT), a Wendy (a large boy who was stoked to be Wendy) and a Tinker Bell (a cute tiny weeee little boy who was also very happy to be Tinkerbell).  Everyone wanted to be Captin Hook so I picked one of the big kids…. Then I separated the rest of them into ‘Goodies’ and ‘Baddies’.     

They told me that we needed a fight scene and promptly ran away to get sticks and weapons from around the school grounds and spent the rest of the time out of control fighting each other!!!  I was worried at this stage but some of the boys helped me write a simple ‘script’ and I then left them to it to practice.    A few hours later they found me to give me a preview… the kids actually pulled it off… I thought the skit was very good… I was very proud of them! 

So the camp was fun, very tiring but fun!    The teachers had organised lots of English songs so we sang and danced a lot.   They made an attempt to teach us foreigners how to do Thai dancing (its not easy) and at night we even had a mini disco with the kids (oonce ooonce music, the kids loved that).   The foreigners were put up in a hostel that had a HOT shower (yay) and I was stoked to meet Cim as she is volunteering ‘quite’ close to my village so I am pretty sure we will meet up again.