Christmas Thai Style

On Christmas Eve, one of the teachers in the school asked if I'd like to attend a little dinner her and a few others were having to mark the day. I jumped at this opportunity for company over the Christmas period as I was afraid I was going to end up celebrating alone this year. I needed to find something to use as a present for Kris Kringle and eventually plumped for a selection box I had been sent from Ireland. I figured they would get a fair deal more excited about it than I would they love anything foreign. I also brought some snowballs that id been sent as dessert which went down a treat as they were all keen to try 'farang' chocolate. Anyway one of the girls owns a clothes shop she runs after school and we settled here and got some food in. Not quite a traditional Christmas dinner it consisted of Somtam (papaya salad), pork in garlic and a few others accompanied of course with steamed rice. It was good fun hanging out with the gang though and they were constantly asking me questions about Christmas and how it is celebrated in Ireland. I didn't mind this as it meant they were speaking in English which is usually the problem as not all of them are too strong at it. I even managed to teach them a drinking game when the beer came out which was hilarious as it involved using English! Soon we got around to the business of the evening – the presents! Everyone got something small and we piled them up and pulled numbers out of a hat, I ended up with a cushion with a bear on it which was funny to the gang. My present went to the only non teacher among us, he's a guy who works in one of the banks and speaks superb English. After this a few of the gang went home as we all had school the next day but I decided to make the most of the occasion and stayed out drinking.

Now I feel obliged here to point out that Thai people aren't great drinkers. I'm not exactly immune to getting wasted but compared to most of these gang I was drinking them under the table. For a start they put ice in everything. They drink bottles of beer in glasses full of ice, they drink glasses of chilled beer with ice. Its nuts. Oh they give draught beer (if you are lucky enough to find it) in towers that hold about 3 litres and in this there is a core tube full of ice to keep it chilled. Then you just pour away from the tap. They thought I was weird when I asked them not to put ice in my glass and I looked at them like they were crazy when they packed the glass with ice and dribbled some beer on it. Like I said I'm not a guy for guzzling pints with no ill effect but I felt like a king here in that regard. Id say I was drinking two glasses to every one they had and without ice as well. Couldn't get my head around it at all. One of the girls had a go with keeping up with me and ended up getting carried home.

The next day I'm up at 6 (after hitting the hay close to 1) and head for assembly a bit before 8 to get dressed as Santa Claus. All I had was a red hat, fake beard and a red t-shirt I turned inside out to hide the pattern. Then began an hour of trying to entertain 1500 students plus however many teachers were there with a brief explanation of Santa Claus and Christmas and a few performances put on by the MEP (very reluctantly). Then at the end a few of the teachers joined me for a rendition of “We Wish You A Merry Christmas” . Throughout all this the different mikes we had would randomly turn off so I had to chop and change between them for most of the hour which made for a half hazard show. This was followed by a day's teaching and then out on the lash again with my new found buddies. This one involved whiskey as well as beer and I got a little drunk this time. Now this is where things start to unravel as I had arranged with Nancy (a teacher on the program who lived in a town up the road) to meet and hang out with her over the weekend in Chiang Mai. So up I got at 7 after hitting the hay at 5 and jumped on a bus. Upon arriving in CM I got a hostel for the night and met up with Nancy. We bummed around the city for the day and met a few other teachers who were unexpectedly in CM for the weekend. This night also finished up around 5 and was pretty messy as I had been on the lash for 3 days with little or no sleep. I caught a bus the next day back to Li properly exhausted to find a big fair completely set up in my town. I had seen some stuff going on but nobody told me what it was about so I paid it no heed. I didn't realise however that they would be blaring music till 2am which of course kept me awake as I'm not far from the market and this was a rock concert set up. All in all a nice relaxing Christmas!