Bringing in 2007 with a BANGkok

I thought I put this one earlier this week. Sorry.


New Year’s Eve morning we flew back to Bangkok. After much waiting because of large crowds, we finally checked into our room at the Asia Hotel. It is located near a newer area of Bangkok. We settled in and then went out to wander around a little bit. I found some great shoes to wear with my dress and to got a pedicure. We came back to the hotel and laid down for a short rest. We finally got ready for the big New Year’s Eve party at our hotel. The theme was Green Leaves Night. In addition to some great food which included a variety of selections from around Asia. I pretty much stuck with the Thai food. I could not get enough of it.

The party also had some great entertainment. They had a couple of bands with excellent singers. There was a female magician who was pretty good, a very good Elvis impersonator (for some reason, Thai people like Elvis), traditional Thai Welcome Dance, Thai sword fighting, and other traditional Thai dancing. It was very interesting and entertaining. The most interesting event was the “lady boys”. These are transvestites that perform traditional Thai dances and various caberet style shows. In most of the cases, it is not fair for a guy to look so good in a dress. There was one, however, that should have retired. Overall, the entertainment and food made for a fun evening.

What made the evening even more fun, were the people at our table. We had a couple from Sweden (Lisbeth and Kenneth), a lady from Finland (Eeva-Lusa), another couple from Germany, Martin from California, and two other guys from Barcelona, Spain (Niko and Antonio). Only the couple from Sweden and Eeva-Lusa stayed most of the night. Eeva-Lusa is an English teacher in Finland so we talked with her most of the night. The Swedish couple spoke some English and what they did not understand Eeva-Lusa translated for them (she also spoke Swedish). I tried to talk a bit with the guys from Spain, but the entertainment was a bit loud and my spanish is so limited that it was not very indepth.

One of the funny things, was that the guys from Spain showed up around 10pm. They were on a Spanish dinner schedule, which means eating dinner after 9pm. They were able to get something. They stayed for a while, but it was not enough action for them so they went out to find other celebrations. Martin and the German couple also left early.

Most of our fun was with Kenneth, Lisbeth, and Eeva-Lusa. We drank, danced, and generally just enjoyed ourselves. It was Lisbeth’s milestone birthday (As a lady I refuse to divulge this information), which is what brought them to Thailand. Eeva-Lusa was taking several months off from teaching to travel around Thailand. They all enjoyed the country.

As the evening drew to a close, we were served champagne to celebrate the bringing in of the New Year. How little did we know that it would be brought in with a real bang. I do hope that the people who left early did not encounter any trouble. Apparently earlier in the day, a couple of bombs had gone off around Bangkok. We had not heard about this. At midnight, two more bombs exploded in the major modern shopping district about 10 blocks from our hotel. There was supposed to be a huge New Year’s celebration in this area. Fortunately and prudently , the government cancelled it. It probably saved many lives. Three people had been killed in the earlier bombings as well as several injured. We found out just after midnight. Eeva-Lusa had tried to go to the roof of the hotel to see if there were any fireworks. She came back, not able to get to the roof top restaurant, to tell us a friend had just called to tell her about the bombings. Since the party was over, we headed back to our room to see if we could find out what was going on. Unfortunately, the international media had sketchy info at best

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