“No one puts Baby in a corner.”
- Patrick Swayze, Dirty Dancing
I was pretty lucky that my school decided to send all of
their students to Scout Camp (Makajawan) on Christmas Eve and Day. Here’s the
buildup to the birth of Sweet Baby Jesus.
If you can’t beat em’, take a motorbike
There’s only one road to get to the school from my
apartment. It’s a pretty busy road; you pass two temples and a major market going
towards it. Construction began on it about 6 months ago and doesn’t show signs
of stopping. On a normal day it will take me about 15 minutes to get there. On
a bad day, about 40.
Tuesday is my day to do “English on Stage,” where a Thai
teacher and myself will teach an English expression at the morning assembly.
This starts at 7:55 AM. The previous week I was almost late because traffic was
so terrible. I anticipated bad traffic again so I left early. The taxi ride
goes fine until we get within a kilometer of the school (yeah, I say kilometer
now) before hitting absolute gridlock. 20 minutes go by and we’ve hardly moved.
I start getting a little antsy. Reason being:
1.
The gas meter is a solid inch below empty. We’ve
been in this taxi for at least a half hour. I have no idea how the car hasn’t
run out of gas yet.
2.
I have to be on stage in 5 minutes.
Somehow sensing I’m close to being late, the taxi driver
flags over a motorbike and tells him where I need to go. I hop on the motorbike
and we easily weave through the stalled traffic. We arrive at the school and I
check my watch. 7:55. I pay the driver 15 baht and sprint to the stage. The
Thai national anthem begins to swell as I take my place backstage. The assembly
has just started. I’ve made it.
In typical Thai irony, the director gave a long speech to
the students, a teacher was honored for being promoted, and another teacher
taught the school a few Thai phrases – all before I went on stage. 40 minutes
had passed before we explained what, “I was working my tail off” meant. Mai pen
rai.
SANTA’S COMING! OH MY GOD! SANTA’S COMING! I KNOW HIM! I
KNOW HIM!
My school goes hard in the paint when it comes to Christmas.
The English Department was in charge of putting on a Christmas skit for the
school at the morning assembly. The main act was a song and dance number set to
Mariah Carey’s (and Justin Bieber’s) “All I want for Christmas is You.” Earlier
in the week, I was told that all native English teachers would be auditioning
for the “lead” dancer. There were about 16 students and teachers dancing but
one English teacher would be at the very front of the stage. I go the audition after school early in the week. The dance choreography
is based completely off of this video.
I’m hit with flashbacks to YAMO/Brillianteen while trying to
quickly learn these new dance moves. I looked terrible but the students were
cracking up. Anyway, no other teachers ended up auditioning so I got the lead
part. Like I said, I’m on the fast track to being a star here. We rehearsed the
dance and skit all week after school.
I woke up at 6 AM on Friday to get some extra practice in. I
was feeling awake, calm, and confident. I arrive at school dressed in pajamas
for the skit.
My “wife” (another
Thai teacher) and I go on stage and wish our daughter (a student) sweet dreams
on Christmas Eve. She asks if Santa’s coming that night. Duh. We put her to bed
and exit the stage. I quickly put my Santa Claus costume on top of my pajamas.
I tried it on the previous day but had never danced in it. It was a little
loose around the waist but the legs were tight, so I figured I should be fine.
Mariah Carey starts to sing with her golden voice and the
dancing begins. I’m killing it. My
finger snaps are straight out of West
Side Story. My arm circles could get me into Cirque de Solei. I’m feeling
really glad that I spent an hour dancing to a youtube video by myself.
A big roar comes from the crowd and I see more fingers
pointing in my direction than usual. I look down and realize that my pants are
at my knees. The pants slipped out from under my belt and were too big to sit comfortably
at my waist, so they fell. I look like I’m halfway in a red potato sack with my
pajama pants exposed.
I frantically try pulling my pants up while dancing at the
same time. This holds for a few seconds and then falls back down to my thighs. My dance
moves start falling apart. The other teacher I’m paired with grabs my pants and
holds them while dancing.
So now this looks completely ridiculous- she’s holding my
pants up while trying to dance, and I’m trying to dance while being held on to
at the waist. We eventually make it through three and half minutes to
thunderous applause from the audience.
But the show isn’t over. A teacher dressed up as Santa rides his motorbike around the students, yelling
out various Christmas catchphrases. Once he dismounts, another teacher and I
pretend to be his reindeer as we go up the stage. We couldn’t really think of
how to be reindeer, so we copied the horse trot from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Here’s a visual reminder.
The rest of the assembly was mellower. We threw candy into
the crowd and the students went nuts. I went on stage and asked questions about
Christmas, giving prizes to those who answered correctly. After the production ended we posed for
pictures with teachers and students. I didn’t take these but they are some of
the most painfully funny and awkward photos I’ve ever seen. Enjoy.
"THROW YA HANDS IN THE AIR, IF YOUZ A TRUE PLAYA."
I have no idea why my eyes are closed in all of these
I got several compliments on my performance from the other
teachers. They thought it was a hilarious idea to drop my pants in front of the
whole school. I had to quickly explain that it was an accident and I didn’t
really mean for it to happen. They tended to ignore that and patted me on the
back instead. A star was born.
Has anyone seen Alan?
This weekend a couple of my friends came into Bangkok. We
decided to mix it up and go to one of the rooftop bars in the city. We settled
on Sky Bar, which is 64 stories in the air and the tallest point in Bangkok. It’s
also where they filmed a portion of The Hangover Part II – it’s the scene where
Chow gets arrested by the police.
When you get off the elevator they take you a waiting area.
You have to buy a drink before they let you see the grand view. No problem, we’ll
just get a drink right? The cheapest one was 350 baht – about $15. Gotcha. That’ll
blow the bank account pretty quick.
The view of the entire city was incredible. This was easily
the nicest bar I had ever been too and it was filled with a pretty swanky
crowd. It was nice feeling like a baller for 45 minutes.
With the day off on Monday, we decided to do some traveling.
Our destination for the day was Ayutthaya. This is the old capital of Thailand
and is famous for its ruins and monuments. It’s only about an hour away from
Bangkok so it’s perfect for a day trip. When we got there we were hounded by the
local tour guides who wanted us to use their services. We initially intended to
just get around on foot for the day so we just walked away from the tour
guides. They followed us and ended up cutting their price by 2/3. We relented
and got a driver to take us around to the all the key areas for the day. I
guess literally walking away is the best bargaining technique.
The town was awesome. I felt like I was in an Indiana Jones movie as we walked around the ruins.
The Buddha in the tree
A really, really long Buddha
Next week I’m up to Chiang Mai for New Years. Merry
Christmas to everyone in the states! Wishing I could be back but also very happy to be here.
And just for fun-
Mark
No comments:
Post a Comment