Christmas!

It's that time already! Christmas! I'm shooting through this now, I won't have time to put up every little detail, so I'm just going to concentrate on the major events. Like Christmas. The weekend after the camping weekend from the previous post.

Christmas eve was a Friday, and after school one of the girls who worked at there took me to her and her families and cooked up a roast dinner. It was actually really good. I ate so much that when I got home I just fell straight to sleep.

Christmas day and Ben arrived early in the morning to take me out. We spent the morning in various temples, at various feasts with lots of food and booz. The food was great, as was the booz. On the way back, we stopped off to buy some stuff to decorate Ben's house with for new year. We put lights all over the place for a couple of hours, and then he took me to one of the other teachers houses. I met a few of her family members, had some more food and more booz.

I went home and had a shower and got changed, had a quick rest and attempted to sober up a little. After a couple of hours several cars arrived in the school. There were all the teachers, their families, their extended families and important families in the village. I jumped into one of the cars and we drove to another school.

The school was huge and had a big stage with lots of music. There was a massive feast brought to the table. A big fish dish. There was also two bottles of whiskey on the table. They made me a drink of whiskey and coke, but no one else was drinking the whiskey. They kept topping my drink up, and the fish and various accompaniments left me very full indeed.

Then they brought on round two.

Round two?

Wow.

Here goes...

I managed... just.

Round three.

Oh god.

Then round four.

Eventually we finally finished with round seven.

I don't get how I managed to loose so much weight, when I have posts about how I've eaten so much out there!

The night, as they all seem to do in Thailand, ended suddenly with everyone getting up and ready to leave. It was only about 8 o'clock. But then Ben said "You not go home now, we go out." And the teachers said he was taking me to some night club. We grab the whiskey from the table and hide it in bags, then make off with it. Hmmm.

We went into Saraburi city and to a place called A-Jacks. You bring your own bottles of spirits, hens the grabbing of the whiskey. Strange. Once inside it was obvious it was pretty dead. The place though was like nothing I'd ever seen before. It had a main stage, but was set up like a posh bar all around the dance floor.

Oh and look. Strippers. Oh hello. About five came over to us and started practising their English on me. Awkward. As it started to get busier, the tables and seats filled up and bands started doing sound checks.

Throughout the night there was live 'rock' type music, and between the bands was dance music... a very strange experience. Then at about midnight, the music changed again, to something... Thai. And all the strippers started leaving the floor and the tables. Suddenly dancing poles just started appearing on the stage and around the whole club. This is a seriously surreal night. But a good one. Definitely the least 'Christmasy' Christmas I've ever had.

I would later learn the reason for this is, they do Christmas and New year on the same day (because A: they don't celebrate Christmas, and B: the saying is "Merry Christmas and Happy New year!" and they think that means it's on the same day).