i woke up christmas morning and opened the two presents i had, one from grace and guys mom and one from beth at school, neither of which were expected. after packing up a few things and as i was into the city, steph called to tell me that her pool was closed for a christmas party that was happening the next day, so the few people already there had decided to search for a hotel nearby her place with a pool, since that had been our christmas day plans. luckily, it wasnt too hard to find one, and after they looked online for an hour, they discovered there was one down the street about 10 minutes from her place.
while they were searching, i was shopping, and i was able to find something that resembled christmas cookies. i was very pleased and surprised by this and the fact that they were not exorbitantly overpriced, as i had previously gone on a search for candy canes for my classes and discovered that anything related to peppermint in this country is nonexistent and anything related to christmas is ridiculously overpriced. so i bought the cookies and made my way to the pool.
when i showed up, meghan tasha and steph were all lounging in their bathing suits and santa hats and riha had just jumped out of the pool shivering. (i realize i havent written about most of the people in my group, so ill dedicate a few posts to them eventually). the thing about this pool is that it was in between two high rises, which were blocking the sun. and even though thailand is still scorching, in the shade and with a breeze, it can be quite chilly. still, we had made a decision to stay poolside on christmas and we were determined to see that rhough, so we stayed for a few hours before deciding the next logical step was to go get massages.
now one thing thailand is known for is its massages. there are special schools all over the place which teach traditional thai massage techniques, which is different from what many people generally think of when they think of a massage because rather than it being a relaxing hour of muscle rubbing, it is much more vigorous and entails molding and flexing the body to get all of the kinks out. even though they are insanely cheap here (100-300 baht per hour on average, more in very touristy areas), i had not yet been to get a massage yet. many from our group had taken advantage of this though, and i was warned that it could be relaxing, or painful, and that there was a possibility that i would end up with bruises. still, we hopped on some motorbike taxis and made our way over to the shopping center to get our christmas day massages and then shop for some goodies.
all four of us were put into a room that was already occupied by one other person. steph and i were wearing skirts and so we were given linen pants to put under because of the "bending." still, the lighting was dim and soft music was playing so it was rather relaxing. so my masseuse starts on my feet and i start to drift off, until meghan, who is lying less than a foot to my right, starts giggling. for the rest of the hour, we were periodically interrupted with meghans bursts of laughter, pain, or disgust at what her masseuse was molding her body into. it was an interesting experience to say the least, but very enjoyable nontheless.
after our massages we met up with amy and decided to go shopping at the big c for some holiday treats. what we really wanted was baileys and creme de menthe to make a drink that beth introduced us to which just tastes like christmas. but as i said before, mint is hard to come by here in thailand, and so we had to settle for a very expensive bottle of baileys. while we were shopping, we came across a woman giving announcements over a microphone to the whole store. meghan decided it was the perfect time to start caroling and took her mic to sing jingle bells. though we all walked away and pretended to not know her, it was pretty obvious we were together, as we were 1. the only white people in the store and 2. all wearing our santa hats. its really difficult to take her anywhere sometimes.
we went back to stephs and all showered and changed and waited for andrew to show up so we could go to dinner. while we were getting ready, we drank our baileys with chocolate milk and listened to christmas music, perhaps the only time of this day that made it feel like a normal christmas. that is, until andrew arrived, decked out in a full santa outfit, beard and all. we then understood why it took him hours to get there, as he was busy delivering holiday cheer around the greater bangkok area all evening.
for dinner, we decided to try a restaurant near stephs where you go "fishing" for shrimp in a big pool and then eat what you catch. four of us took that option, but after two hours, none of us had caught anything. finally, i got one, but we decided it was pointless and moved down to another location for fried rice and some cocktails before calling it a night, as by that point, it was 2 and all of the places around us were shutting down.
we spent the night at stephs and had a full day planned for saturday, the first stop being an imax movie theater to see avatar. some people from our group go to the movies every week to get a taste of home. while i enjoy watching movies, im not really a fan of going to the theater even when im back in the states, so i had not yet been while over here. to get there, i had another first experience of riding the bts, the skytrain here in bangkok. i could not believe how clean it was. while the city as a whole is pretty dirty, they really monitor what people do on on the train and keep it exceptionally clean.
anyway, by the time we got to the movie theater, the imax showing we wanted to see was sold out, so we settled for just watching it in 3-d. the earliest showing of that was sold out too, and the next show we could get into only had the front row available (they sell specific seats for the movies like it was a play) but we took it anyway. if you havent seen it yet you should, as the graphics are exceptional and the plot line, even with its underlying political commentary, is pretty good as well.
we rushed out of the movies to go to coyote, a mexican restaurant some ofthe girls found earlier in the week. we were told that ladies get free margaritas from 6-8 on wednesdays and saturdays and we wanted to get in as much of that as we could. but when we got there, it was almost 7, and we found out that on saturdays, ladies night is from 10-12. still, we ordered some drinks and food since we were there. back at home, it would have only been decent, but it was definitely the best mexican food here in bangkok, and we are planning on going back as many times on weds and saturdays as possible.
from coyote we jumped into some taxis and went up north to where riha and jake live. they have made some friends with a group of thai college students and we were invited to one of the house parties they were having. the problem here was that by the time we made it that far up north, the party was already breaking up. so instead, the boys made their way over to the future park mall area to meet us. while we waited, we decided to hop on the caterpillar roller coaster. after paying for our first ride, we befriended the guy working at it and we got another one for free!
so the boys finally got there and we went back and hung out at jakes and all of us stayed up there that night. it was night to see someone elses area, but sunday there wasnt much to do up there. so steph tasha and i came back down to bangkok and went to the indian market. im not sure what i was expecting, but i was not impressed by what i saw. the only good thing that came out of that was that we were able to find a decently cheap place to get good indian food.
even though it was nothing like a typical western christmas, i had an awesome weekend and got to do a lot of firsts in thailand.
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