Only One Wish

This year, as I released my krathong into the pond at Benjasiri Park I made only one wish, that Thailand would recover quickly from these devastating floods and that one day Eric and I would be able to return to Bangkok. (Ok, I know that is technically two wishes, but math was never my strong suit)

Happy Loy Krathong!! And as the song says:

Each one with this krathong,

As we push away we pray,

We can see a better day

To better days ahead!

Our New Favorite Holiday- Songkran

For the past three days all of Thailand shut down in order to celebrate Songkran. Traditionally Thailand's new year celebration was a time for Buddhists to make merit at local temples and for the elders to sprinkle water on younger people as a form of blessing and tribute. Included in this blessing was the application of white paste or clay to the face, arms and torso as a sign of protection and to ward off evil.  

The modern Songkran celebration has evolved (or devolved depending on your point of view) into a three day water fight. In Bangkok, two of the most popular areas to celebrate Songkran are Silom Road and Khao San Road. In both areas, they close off the streets and people armed with waterguns, buckets, water bottles and firehoses wage a water fight free-for-all. If defending yourself from water attacks weren't enough, there are also people walking around with bowls of white clay that they will smear on anyone and anything.

We decided that we wanted to experience the party at both of these locations so on Wednesday we headed to Silom dressed in old clothing and armed with a waterproof camera.  As soon as we exited the MRT station at Silom, we were hit with a wall of sound and water. Each side of the street was packed with vendors who were selling food, water guns, and clay. We spent hours wandering the up and down Silom and Patpong with Megan, being bombarded with water and clay.

A before picture

Looking down on Silom towards Sala Daeng BTS

 Clay and water for sale

On Patpong, they busted out the fire-hoses

Doesn't seem like a fair fight.

Fun for all ages!

Megan looking gangster with her Pooh water gun

The aftermath- covered in clay and soaked to the core

On Thursday we headed over to Khao San Road to meet a group of friends. There were fewer people on Khao San Road than there was on Silom, but that meant there was more room to fire your weapon of choice. This time around, we bought our own water guns so we could participate in the craziness. 

We spent most of our time on a street that runs parallel to Khao San Road because we were able to find a street side bar where we could launch sneak attacks on the crowd passing by. After an hour or so of this coupled with our 10 minute water fight with the table next to us, we got kicked out of the bar! 

They didn't allow clay on Khao San Rd, so people discarded their bowls

They even had official signs!

These girls were ruthless. I think they hit us 5 times with ice cold water

Guy prepares his Doremon water gun

Disturbing doll attached to an ambulance- not sure why...

I love my new water gun!

Launching an attack on the crowd

Mike and Guy refill their guns for the next attack

Eric and I have both decided that Songkran is our new favorite holiday. How can you not love a holiday where you hang out with friends and spend all day at the world's largest water fight. Can't wait until next year!

Spirit House Ceremony and Grand Opening

Unlike the United States, Thailand does not separate religion from any thing, it sneaks into business life quite often. For example, when we first started building the plant one year ago, they had a Stone Laying ceremony. Another ceremony that most business in Thailand have is the Spirit House ceremony. 

For those of you that don't know, almost every building in Thailand, from large hotels to a small homes have a spirit house .This is where is where the spirits of the building live and offerings of food, flowers and incense are made to appease the spirits and to bring favor to the home or business. They are highly respected and most employees wai to them as they walk by.

When our plant's spirit house was assembled, there was a big ceremony associated with it. All the employees went outside and listened or prayed with a monk, then about 16 people lifted the main house part on top of the pedestal. Most of the people were managers, but I happened to get selected because I was close by, and because I am known world wide for my feats of strength. So I helped lift the house! Yay! And during the lifting and moving process I almost fell into a drainage ditch. Which could have been rather embarrassing and probably bad luck. Luckily I looked where I was walking and was able to avoid the fall.



Fast forward to February. The next ceremony we had was our Grand Opening. This is when all the "Big Bosses" fly to Thailand and meet local influential Thai people, like the Governor, customs officers, lawyers, police officials, US embassy people, well, you get the idea. For this ceremony there were also dancers and baby elephants. Oh, and MCing the whole thing was a famous news anchor lady. There were a lot of speeches, some dancing, watching elephants and more speeches.

After the speeches and dancing were all done, I had to be part of a mini plant tour. We each stood by a window that looked into our manufacturing bay and briefly explained our process and how awesome we are. If you know me very well, you know that I am quite shy around people I don't know. (but once I know you, I don't shut up) So it was stressful for me to talk to all these big wigs, no one laughed at me and said "you suck!" so I'll take that as a victory!

Great Start to the New Year

Well, it is time for me to write another of these “blog” things. I really don’t know how to do this, so I’ll just do a brain dump, which means I’m going to ramble and meander my way around and finally just abruptly stop.

Watching the sun set over Bangkok on New Years Eve

First let’s talk about New Years Eve. Our first order of business New Years Eve was to drive to Ayutthaya and pick Jeremy up at the Kantary Hotel, which is not too far from my work. Normally the commute is not too bad, maybe about 1 hour. But because it was a big holiday weekend, everyone was leaving Bangkok, and they all were going to the exact same hotel Jeremy is staying in, so the roads were very congested and it took about 1 hour and 45 minutes. We got there, picked him up and made it back home in under an hour. We walked around Lumpini Park for a while, saw some lizards. On the way back we stopped at the Suan Lum Night Bazaar, or what is left of it…it is basically a rubble pile now.

Next we headed to a bar called Bully’s which is next door to the red light district, so obviously we had to walk though it! I have to say, it was not as raunchy as I imagined. However, we did leave rather fast after a few near misses with fire crackers. Next, we stopped at an Irish Pub for a beer and continued our walk toward home. Along the street we stopped at a street side bar and had a drink while playing connect four, which I sucked at. We made it home around midnight and watched the fireworks from our living room. After that I got schooled in the game of Risk. So to sum it all up, I ended 2010 as a Connect Four loser and started 2011 as a Risk loser. Go Me!

This is my "I can't believe I lost" face.

We woke up at a respectable time on New Years Day and Skyped with everyone at the my parent's New Years Celebrity Celebration Spectacular Spectacular (officially called The Awesomeness). It was hard not being there, but we will be back soon enough! After the call, I think I spaced out for a few hours because the next thing I remember doing was driving to Chatachuk Market. For those who don’t know, this is a gigantic weekend market in northern Bangkok. I kind of looked at a map before we left, so I thought we shouldn’t have any troubles finding it (because my mind is like a trap.) But I soon found out my mind trap sucks, but despite that fact we did find it, and even parked! We wandered the market until it was time to go to my boss’s house for Christmas/New Years dinner. Again, the sucky mind trap leads the way and we got hopelessly lost. We made about 4 U-turns on the same road and passed the Don Muang airport 2 or 3 times, but eventually we got there and right on time too! Booya! The party was pretty good, lots of tasty food and good company.

The way home from the party was going great, we didn’t make any wrong turns and the traffic was light. That was until we got to a toll booth. Tolls are not normally a problem, you just pay them and move on, but this time I paid the toll and started driving away and all of a sudden a police man appeared in front of our car and was waving me over. I’m like, crap what did I do? I pulled over and grabbed my Thai license and gave it to him. I was so proud, like “look mister officer, I have a Thai License, respect me!” but he just looks at me and says “Ticket.” I was like, “why?” He said “ticket, police station” I said, “why?” this kind of goes on for a few minutes.

Then he opens his ticket book turns to the back page which has a 4 point plan of how to get money from white people (okay not really, but it did have 4 bullet points, but I can’t read Thai) He points to the number 1000 in point number 3 and said ticket. So I’m like…Ah Ha! He wants 1000 baht! In my head I’m like, not a chance! So I whip out my wallet, and hand him 100 baht. He doesn’t take it and looks kind of offended. He says “Ticket” again I’m like “why?’ and this goes on for a few more minutes. All of a sudden I get a brilliant idea. I grabbed my phone and told the officer I was going to call my Thai friend to help translate. I start dialing and all of a sudden he is like “200 baht”. I stop dialing and give him 200 baht ($6 US) and he says, “go home” I’m like…okay, bye. And we drive off. So that was a great way to celebrate the new year!

Ringing in 2554

Happy New Year! In most of the world it is now 2011, but in Thailand it is actually 2554 (I believe this is because Thailand uses the Buddhist calendar, but when I tried to look it up my google-fu failed me) Our New Years Eve was spent with our friend Jeremy and it was definitely event filled! It included:

Sightseeing at Lumpini Park

Touring the ruins of the Suan Lum Night Bazaar

Playing Connect Four at a makeshift street side bar

 Watching the Bangkok skyline light up with fireworks as the clock struck midnight

All in all, it was a great way to celebrate 2010. Looking forward to the adventures that 2011 will bring!

Celebrating Loy Krathong

This weekend we celebrated our first Thai holiday, Loy Krathong, with our friends Suwat and Tanya. The day actually began with us being woken up by a procession outside our hotel in Hua Hin. A large group of Thai men, women and children were singing, dancing and playing drums as they moved down the street. They grabbed Eric and were trying to convince him to dance with them down the street!

One of the things on my list of things to see in Thailand was monkeys so after breakfast, Suwat took us up to a monastery overlooking Hua Hin. I forgot the name of the monastery, so I dubbed it "Monkey Monastery"

Looks so peaceful, hard to believe it is full of monkeys!

Maybe I should rethink my idea of taking a monkey home as a pet...

Someone left food in the back of their pickup truck- big mistake.

Awwww... baby monkeys!

It was scary watching the monkeys fight over the corn cobs on the ground.

Meditating monkey

I can't believe this monkey is giving me the bird!

After leaving the Monkey Monastery we left Hua Hin and headed back to Bangkok. Along the way we stopped at the Amphawa Floating Market to buy our krathong. This is the first floating market we've been to in Thailand. It was cool to see boats moving up and down the water, selling food to people sitting along the docks.

Our krathong

At dusk we made our way to the Rama VIII Bridge in Bangkok in order to release our krathong into the Chao Phraya River. It took us about an hour to travel the short distance to the river, trying to avoid hitting the throngs of people making their way to the river. Once we finally made it to the river, we were hit with a wall of light- with lanterns floating over head and fireworks exploding over the river. We then lit the candle and incense on our krathong and send out worries floating down the river, to be immediately scooped up by men in boats right offshore. Oh, well- it's the thought that counts!