Who's silly idea was that then.....

Erm....that would have been mine!!!

Tuesday was Queen Sirikit's birthday and as part of the celebrations there was a special Charity 1.8km 'fun run-walk' event being held in Benhakiti Park next to the Queen Sirikit National Convention Centre. It only cost 250 baht to enter (£3) and all the money raised was going towards The Queen Sirikit Centre for Breast Cancer to assist the early detection screening programme of the centre. Fantastic....thought I.....let's do that. It wasn't till later that I realised that registration for the event was at 6am....6AM....and by that time it was too late....I'd already sent an e-mail out to a few friends asking who fancied doing it (Note to self: Read EVERYTHING before asking people if they want to join you!!).

So on Tuesday Chris and I were up at 5am (inhumane time to be up in the morning!!) to be ready in time to meet up with Moon, Georgie and Debbie and be at the registration on time. Well, I had to laugh...we had no clue what was going on or where we needed to be and we discovered that having a Thai with you didn't necessarily make things any clearer!! What a giggle....after some time crowd watching and figuring out where to get numbers and pins to put said numbers on shirts...we finally worked out that there were three separate events that you could do. There was the proper run, the fun run and, if you didn't fancy either of them, you could spend the time it would take to do the run engaging in Community aerobics!!! We did the 'fun run-walk'...we even have a medal to prove it (although I think calling it a mini marathon was a bit of an imagination stretch!!)

We had a lovely relaxing afternoon recovering from our mornings activity and then the lovely Susan jetted in from Deli (She's staying with us for a couple of days). We had a blether and then we went out for Tapas. It was rather funny when this lot pitched up and started serenading us (They must have been bloody hot in that get up!!)

My Birthday Meal

We had a lovely day yesterday and one of the most amazing meals I have had since being in Thailand (Oh it was great!!).

Chris had noticed that The Amazing E-san Fair 2007 was being held this weekend at the Queen Sirikit National Convention Centre so we decided that we would go along and see what it was all about. Moon said that she was free so we invited her to come along with us since she is from E-san. It was really interesting - there was lots of information about places you could visit (Some we already had on our history of Khmer art tour), different resort offers, Kab Bua cloth weaving and demonstrations of silk dyeing as well as music and dancing. Moon absolutely loved it!! We took part in a friendship ceremony which involved holding hands and getting string tied round our wrists (The only word I understood was Friend....but it was interesting to take part!!), we watched the crafts being made (The woven work was so intricate it was amazing to watch the women make it - I would have got lost in about three seconds!!) and the dancing was quite different to what we had seen before. It didn't finish till 8pm so we ended up leaving Moon there and we came home to get ready for going out.

Chris decided that since this was our official celebration of my birthday that we would open the REALLY GOOD bottle of wine that Tom had brought over with him in January. (Good choice Tom - It was absolutely gorgeous!!). Then we jumped into a taxi and headed to Soi 38 to The Face complex where we had booked a table at Hazara. (The Face restaurant group consists of Hazara which does Indian food, Lan Na Thai which specialises in food from Northern Thailand, a bar called The Face bar and a pastry shop called Visage and it is situated in an exquisite complex of old Thai teak houses). When you arrive you go up a wide wooden staircase lit with small lanterns where you are given the choice to either have a drink in the bar or go straight to your table. We decided to have a drink and were shown to a huge day bed with about a zillion cushions on it and a little table in the middle - Chris had a Vodka Martini and I had a Lychee Vodka Martini before heading up to our table. (If you have not been then you really must go - not only is the setting stunning the food is fantastic too!! Hazara is actually named after a tribe and a region in Afghanistan although the cuisine served is associated with northern India). We had lamb samosas as a started which we shared followed by butter chicken, Dhal Hazara (creamy black lentils simmered slowly over the tandoor for eight hours - divine!!), a lamb kebab and saffron pilau rice. Sometimes Indian food can be a bit heavy, especially when your used to eating Thai, but this wasn't at all (Which meant we both had room for desert!!).

We had a great time - the atmosphere was lovely, the décor beautiful and the food fantastic!!!