Christmastime in Bangkok
Christmas Eve and Christmas Day in Bangkok were sort of strange occasions. While all of the malls (the cornerstone of Thai culture – just kidding. But really…) were DECKED OUT for the Christmas season, the decorations seemed to be little more than photo ops for fussily made-up Thai girls to have their pictures taken by their DSLR-toting boyfriends. (As a side note – all of the best Thai boyfriends buy expensive cameras so they can take profile pictures for their girlfriends).
It was a new experience, seeing how hollow all of the decorations and preparations for Christmas really are, when they are presented as a purely commercial interest.
Anywhoo…our modus operandi for Christmas weekend in Bangkok was simple. Don’t treat it like an American Christmas, don’t compare it to an American Christmas. Comparison could only lead to major disappointment. Instead of dwelling on anything, I had a great weekend and I had the warmest, snow-free-est Christmas I’ve ever had.
We started out the weekend with somewhat of a bang. Nina, Adam, myself, and 3 teachers from school went to the Saxophone Pub, which is one of the older music venues in Bangkok. We went to listen to more Thai ska. I still can’t figure out why ska is so popular here. We saw T-Bone, Thailand’s premier ska band, perform. I have now seen the top two ska bands in Thailand and I think I’m set. T-Bone is the more popular one, but the band I saw my first night in Bangkok, Teddy Ska, played a lot of strange covers (like “Mambo No. 5″ and “Crazy in Love”), so I think I liked Teddy Ska more. This is just a reference, in case you ever happen to get into an argument with someone over the best ska band in Bangkok.
Before going to Saxophone Pub, we ate at Greyhound Cafe, which is a chain around Bangkok. Adam and I were dying for pasta and Nina was craving a burger, so we ate to our heart’s content. The decor, the waiter’s uniforms and the menus had poorly translated English all over them.
We moved on to Saxophone Pub. Adam ordered the world’s smallest drink, which was lit on fire. He had to drink it through a straw when it was still on fire. Redonk.
The next day was Christmas Eve. Normally, I wouldn’t have changed out of my pajamas all day. I would have watched Christmas Vacation and alternated between making and scarfing cookies. Then I would have remembered that we have to go to Christmas Eve service at church and I would have dressed up. Then I would have consumed a crap-ton of Welch’s sparkling grape juice and given myself an awful stomachache (it happens every year, I never learn).
This Christmas Eve was different. The Dear Leader had passed away when I was at Smile Camp and I was absolutely beside myself that I didn’t have access to media at that time. Everyone is allowed to have strange, unexplainable obsessions, and I am obsessed with North Korea. Lucky lucky for me, so is Nina! The North Korean government has a few North Korea restaurants all over Asia, meant to be money-making ventures. They feature traditional North Korean food and singers and dancers from the best arts university in North Korea. It sounds like a real treat to me. There was a lot of internal debate going on in my head, whether or not I wanted to go to a restaurant, basically just to give Kim Jong-Il pocket money for his Hennessy. Then he died and I felt better about going! We scanned message boards and read news articles to see if the Bangkok branch of Pyongyang Restaurant, as it is called, was still open. There was no consensus, so we hopped into a cab and hoped for the best.
We found this when we arrived. Heartbreak. Anguish. Dear Leader, why have you forsaken us?
Luckily, we are easily placated by bagels at Bangkok Bagel Bakery, one of my favorite places to go in Bangkok and our back-up plan for Christmas Eve lunch.
The rest of the day was pretty average, as far as days out in Bangkok are concerned.
Central World (Bangkok’s hugest mall that keeps on getting blown up and rebuilt) was stuffed to the gills with Christmas cheer.
We are guilty. Of course, we took advantage of the photo opportunities too.
Am I wearing a bear head? Yes. Did I really just make this college? You better believe it.
Onto MBK, where I had a big purchase to make.
I BOUGHT A NEW CAMERA. A BIG, BEAUTFIL, ALMOST PROFESSIONAL ONE.
She is a wonder.
Adam figured out what he wants to start collecting in Bangkok
We had an oh-so-elegant dinner at the MBK food court. I had noodles and made Adam take a picture of me.
ho ho ho noodles
We took too long at MBK to do anything else we wanted to for the evening – no Chulalongkorn University concert, no Christmas Eve service for me. We found comfort on the 75, just like we always do.
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Christmas morning!
I went to a church service (luckily no speaking in tongues that day) and met up with Adam and Nina at Central World, where we would have lunch with Nina’s friends from UCLA.
I had some time to kill, so I thought I’d indulge in a white chocolate cranberry mocha from Starbucks.
While sipping my mocha and not-so-cutely trying to pick out the cranberry topping to make sure that none of it had gone to waste, I noticed a creepy looking, fat, older dude. Normally, this is no big deal. They’re a dime a dozen in Thailand and I take delight in scowling at them all, as the vast majority of them are here to taken advantage of Thai women. This man, however, freaked me out. He was wearing a Brown sweatshirt!
I was giving him strange looks and I think he noticed that I was looking at him too. I was trying to decide whether or not to say something. In all honesty, I would eat it up if some random Brown alum came up and started talking to me. So despite his schlumpy demeanor, I walked up to him and said hello.
“Hi! Merry Christmas! Did you go to Brown?”
He looks down at his sweatshirt. The nice brown one with the red, stitched-on letters. The same one I have in my closet at home. He looks surprised, as if he just noticed that what his sweatshirt read.
“Oh. No. It’s a good school though. Did you go there?”
“Uh, yep. I just graduated this year.”
“What college? The college of liberal arts”
At this point, I didn’t really know how to answer, since undergrad at Brown isn’t organized into colleges. I didn’t even feel like correcting him. He was far and away the most depressed-looking person that I had seen in a long time.
“Uhh, yeah. The liberal arts college. Have a merry Christmas.”
And I left, feeling a little unsettled and weirded out.
I had people to meet and dumplings to eat though!
We all had lunch at Din Tai Fung, which the New York Times named as one of the world’s top ten restaurants. How could I not say no?
Adam and I had hibiscus tea at Din Tai Fung
Din Tai Fung is famous for their small, steamed buns that are filled with soup. They did not disappoint. And look how cute they look.
Unfortunately, we ate them so fast that I didn’t even think about taking more pictures.
We couldn’t spend too much time at lunch, because we had a Christmas cruise to attend!
