If you have been reading this blog, you may remember the night I bought my pink king's shirt and took off the red Roots shirt I was wearing so I could wear the new shirt I just bought. Unfortunately, I left the Root's shirt in the car of my new friends and assumed I would never see it again, like the tale of my black pants.
However, last night I got my red shirt back! Our new friends invited us to supper and returned the red shirt left in their car. Eat's oldest friend, a lawyer and candidate in the upcoming election had rented his house on the Chay Prayo river to a restaurant that is now famous in Bangkok and Josh and Sylvia and I had the privilege of eating there . The lawyer gave us a tour of the house, taking us to his bedroom ( now filled with dinners), showing us where they lit the kratong candles to float in the river at the lo kratong celebrations ( again, filled with diners) and where they used to play...in the kitchen. Not sure the chefs appreciated us waltzing through their kitchen or the diners for that matter.
The food was great and the advantage of going with Thais is that they order for you and everyone shares in the meal. I ate food I would normally not eat or in fact, ever dream of eating. The Thais have a very specific way of preparing to eat their food. For example, the dumpling that we had for appetizers had to be put on a bed of lettuce with spices, then a very specific sauce was liberally sprinkled on top and then eaten in one gulp. What was great, as we were eating the various dishes, was to know which sauce or spice went on which dish. Sylvia and I passed on a few dishes but Josh was very adventurous and ate everything.
The conversation ranged from the election this week-end to Karma and the 10 principles of Buddhism. The politician/lawyer had just gone to a fortune teller who told him he was going to win the election, so I guess I now know a member of parliament. They have a proportional voting system, so if he does win, he will simply be a number in a coalition government. It is very hard for any one party in a proportional voting system to win a majority.
We also had a chance to discuss colours and days of the week. Apparently, every day of the week has a different colour and every Thai person knows what day of the week and time they were born. In fact, the names of the days of the week correspond to the names in the solar system i.e. sun, pra-a-tit, is the name of the sun as well as Sunday when you use a different prefix-wan
The Thais also know what time they were born and with the day of the week and time they can predict their personalities and they did quite a good job describing Josh because we happened to know the time and day of the week when he was born.
To-night, I am playing Santa Claus for a bunch of Japanese kids in my building who probably never heard of Christmas or Santa Claus and tomorrow we are off to Vietnam so the next few days should be quite the adventure.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment