Monday 4 December 2006

Oh Christmas Tree, Oh Christmas Tree

The run up to Christmas in Bangkok is very strange - the decorations go from the sublime (See photos of Emporium Department Store) to the ridiculous

(This sorry excuse for a Christmas Tree was outside our local travel agents - i really don't know why they bothered!!).



It is soooo strange wondering around in the heat of Bangkok listening to Christmas Carols being sung by Thai’s who are predominately Buddhists.

Chris and I decided that we might feel slightly more festive if we put our tree up earlier than we normally would in the UK - little did we know that this decision would lead to an invasion of the Thai's!! We asked Moon if she would like to help decorate the tree (She was ridiculously excited at the prospect - it was very sweet) so we bought some Thai wine (I wouldn't recommend it - tastes a bit like alcoholic Ribena but there was no way i was going to give her any of our wine after the last time!!) as well as normal wine for us and decided that we would phone out for Pizza. It had been Mai's Birthday (Moon's Sister) the previous week so we invited her along as well. The tree was up and the lights were half on when the Pizza arrived - we had just sat down to munch when the door went - it was Moon's Aunt Naparon and her sister ??????? (We couldn't work out what her name was.....then we discovered that Aunt Naparon is actually Khun Whan and that Naparon is her Japanese name (The Thai's have Thai names, English names, Japanese names.....honestly......Outer Mongolian name's wouldn't surprise me!!!)......at this point we gave up - they are now known as Aunty 1 and Aunty 2) and about five minutes later Mai’s Boyfriend turned up!!


We had such good fun – As you can see from the photo’s Moon was ‘Maw Maw’ again – to be fair Mai was not much better. Moon managed a whole bottle of Thai wine (Which is about the size of a glass coke bottle) before deciding to hang Christmas Decorations from her ears - she kept trying to tell us she was ‘Nit Noi Maw Maw’ which means only a little drunk but no-one believed her. Mai also let slip that the night Moon had got drunk on ‘Madam’s wine’ she had gone to the wrong room, had burst through the door and then ended up really confused when the room was completely empty (Can you imagine how bad it would have been if there had been a maid asleep in there!!). Poor Moon, she then got teased relentlessly about the fact that she had kept that one quiet!!

It was the Kings Birthday the next day so they all had the day off and didn’t leave till late – a good night was had by all.

3 comments:

peter_may said...

And, of course, the Burns's weren't at all maw maw!

Anonymous said...

Maw Maw is very easy to say when you're drunk. Alcholic ribena! I remember a small girl in France drink Ratifia (not the correct spelling) by the large glass, and it tasted a lot like ribena. You must've moved on from your alcohopop days now you're a respestible married woman, Frog...

Carol said...

I may be married but will definitely never be respectable!! (although I have moved on slightly since the Ratifia days).

Good to hear from you Kenny!! (Been a long time). How the devil are you?