A Very Thai New Year

Happy New Year from Bangkok!

Last night was a very interesting way to ring in 2010. We spent most of the day by the pool in our hotel. It was an awesome way to beat the 90 degree and 90% Bangkok heat. And work on my tan before I head back to cold, wintery California.

Next on the agenda- New Year's Eve plans/Shaun's birthday. It's shocking how many Berkeley people you run into on the road. For instance, our friends from Berkeley/TKE were in town. So we made plans to meet up. I was stoked to see familiar faces after 3 months with strangers. We caught a cab across town to their hotel. After much haggling with the receptionist (who mistook us for hookers because we were trying to get up into our friends' room), we gathered our friends and tagged along with them to dinner.

Upon their hotel concierge's recommendation, we ate at a concept restaurant called Cabbages and Condoms. It's a restaurant that brings awareness to HIV, AIDs, and sexual awareness in general. Really good food and entertaining decor. Like condom santa. I won't go into any more details but I will say that I had trouble finding my money in my purse the rest of the night because of the free condoms floating around.

After dinner is when the chaos began. NYE always ends up being some sort of adventure, no matter where I am. There were 7 of us in total so we had to split up to take cabs to RCA, a district/street with a fairly large NYE party. Kevin, Shin, Shaun and I got into one cab, and the others said they would follow after dropping some stuff back at their hotel. However, by the time we got to RCA, we realized that a lack of cell phones and organization was going to be a problem. RCA is not a centralized area, there were multiple entrances into the outside music venue, and cabs were dropping people off at various locations around RCA. We waited for the other 3 guys for about an hour before giving up and trying to head to a club called Funky.

Funky, or so we thought, was located in Patpong aka the red light district of Bangkok. It was just about the last place we expected to end up at for NYE. But we only had about an hour til midnight so we gave up on finding Funky and hunkered down at a bar with live music, some go go dancers, and ample dance space. It was fun! Definitely a very Bangkok kind of new year. It was completely unplanned and included a lot of twists and turns but if there is one thing that I've learned in the last 3 months, it is that plans change and you just have to go with it. Less stress=more fun.

And lastly, HAPPY BIRTHDAY SHAUN!!!