i apologize in advance for all the typo's etc in this post.-drunk as a skunk and i broke my glasses, so i will try to fight my way through the haze and double vision.
well, it was the first new year i had celebrated in isaan as an homeowner and single parent, broke and stressed out, but hanging in there....
one of the locals comes around and eventually manages to get it through to me that, according to thai custom, thais hand over gifts at new year, not at xmas as we stupid farang do, and he is here to invite me to the party they are giving for the kids of the moo-baan, to be held at the home of the poo-yai baan on new year's eve. how it works, he explains is that everybody buys a gift, hands it in and then on the evening , the gifts are numbered, and all the kids draw a number from the box, and collect what they have drawn
fair enough, i think (sorry, no quotation marks- i can't see them on the keyboard at the moment) and i ask the fellow how much i should expect to spend. he sez: approx 200 thb per child, so off i go and buy the shit and hand it all over. kids all excited coz they saw what i bought and they thunk it was for them.
well, we get to the party.and there is a huge pile of gifts, all beautifully wrapped; a truck with a generator connected to an amp connected to a set of speakers which dwarf the guy's house and it is all belching out the usual crap music at a volume which makes it impossible to hear the actual song (mercifully) and i find some snacks and plug each ear with a boiled, salted peanut.
the party was set to kick off at two o'clock (8 pm for those not used to thai time) and i get myself a quart of warm chang and sit down on one of the mats spread down, blocking the entire road.
the local "bad boy" arrives and singles me out and insists i drink some of the shit he has made of a mixture of laaw khow, herbs, two scorpions- all steeped together for a few days in preparation for the party.
this jerk thinks he gets street cred by being a personal friend of the local farang "bad boy" and we tolerate each other on this basis.
i pretend to take a swig of the shit he has offered, and hand it back to him and he sucks on it and pukes on his shirt and passes out,- normal behaviour in these parts, and i could make a fortune taking bets on just how long the guy will last before he pukes....
well, the party kicks off with a whole queue of drunks making speeches. the kids are almost all asleep by now, but the "adults" have got to have their say, and they make a real meal of it.
by now i wm getting bloody hungry and all the beer is sold out and i mosey on over to where the food is on offer (free)
well, there are two big pots with orange coloured shit and a mountain of rice and i dish some up for the kids and then when i dish up for myself
of course one of those chicken asshole doughnut thing pours off the ladle and i lose my appetite and i take a new bowl and resign myself to eating only the rice.
i fukkn hate rice!
eventually all the "important" people finish their speeches and they start calling out the numbers drawn for the gifts
my kids get pissed off with me coz my ears are blocked with peanuts and i dont hear when their names are called and i remove the peanuts but one pops the nut out and when i try to dig it out it works its way further in and starts pushing against my eardrum. fukkn painfull.
my kids each receive a packet of biscuits and a packet of "mama" noodles respectively and the guy who did the draw and his wife each drew the 200 thb gift i had bought.
i try to do a swap with the kid who got the four cans of chang, but the little shit won't trade and the local badboy awakes from his coma and confiscates them from the kid and hands me two.
somehow he finds more booze and when i finally arrive home, a sleeping, disappointed son on each arm, i am well drunk.(not drunk in the thai sense- i can still walk and talk and i didn't puke on my shirt, but i know i am gonna be in for one mutha of a hangover tomorrow...)
i wake up at 5 a.m. to the sound of some prick shouting "dabe! dabe!"
and i figure he is calling me (dave. dave) and i stagger downstairs to find a drunk thai teenager who i have never met before clutching four quarts of chung and he has puke on his shirt and he claims to know somebody who knows me and he is already in my house and he sits down and proceeds to break a tooth trying to open one of the bottles and i hand him an opener and he opens all four bottles and passes out, falling forwards and hitting his head on the coffee table and slides down and now he is lying on the floor in a puddle of his own vomit.
well, i hate to see the chang go to waste so i proceed to force myself to drink them before they spoil and pretty soon my hangover is gone and i know i may as well carry on coz i fucked up anyway and will face a bigger hangover tomorrow but whaddafuk!
pon's shit ugly sister arrives with one of those money trees and sez she wants me to donate money for the monks and i say i don't like monks and to tell them to get a real job if they want money and i find out that wasn't the real reason she was in my house and it has been a while, but the image of sobering up and finding a beetle- nut ring around my dick flashes through my mind and i chase her out.
i spend half an hour digging pieces of broken peanut out of my ear with a bent paperclip and remind myself never to be so fukkn stupid again
i get a fonecall inviting me to another party and i drag the comatose thai out of my house and dump him in the middle of the soi, load the kids and the dog on the bike and off we go.
new year's day lasts another week coz everybody has to have their own party, so they take it in turns and the loud music does not let up for a moment.
i find a source of real earplugs and resign myself to my fate. (the mutha of muthas of hangovers when i finally get through all the parties)
if you can't beat 'em, join 'em!
merry xmas and happy new year to you all!
cheers