A Right Royal Fiasco

The Crown Princess comes to officially open Sara's school. Given the veneration of the Royal Family here, this is a momentous event indeed, and there's been weeks of making displays, practising courtseys and drilling the children. Sukhumwit Road is closed for a few hours, paralysing central Bangkok, and security is tight, with a hundred armed police on the premises. Primary school children can be dangerous, it appears.

Pedantry

OK, fair play to Damian for spotting a grammatical error in the previous post (do you see it?). He wins today's star prize of a yellow polo shirt (worn once). Feel free to collect it any time, Deebs.

You can't just Barge through

Bargin'

The celebrations of the King's Diamond Jubilee build all weekend, climaxing in the Royal Barge Procession. It only happens once a decade if you're lucky, and as we pile down to the river, we're joined by a million other Bangkokians, still uniformly clad in their yellow polo shirts. It's an impressive sight as the King's fleet of 60 gilded barges float past, crewed by oddly-dressed rowers who perform a peculiar stylised rowing dance in perfect synchrony. I guess it's all a bit like Trooping the Colour, but with more water, and less horses.

Yellow Fever

I go into town, and I notice a lot of yellow shirts. In fact, it soon becomes apparent that everyone, and I do mean everyone, is wearing matching yellow polo shirts. Let me tell you, wandering round a city with 9 million identically-dressed inhabitants is strangley unsettling. I meet up with Sara after school. She's wearing a bright yellow polo shirt.

What, this Friday?

Thais do like to leave things to the last minute. This Friday marks the 60^th jubilee of the King; obviously an important milestone, and the government have announced that Friday will be a public holiday. The daft thing is, they only got round to telling everyone today (Wednesday). I guess you don’t really need a whole lot of notice, but coming from the UK, where such things would be announced a good year or two in advance, it just seems somewhat haphazzard…

I saw it in a Jazz Magazine

Sand Castle

At the weekend we head down to the beach for the Hua Hin Jazz Festival along with Si and Tess. And what a fantastic way to spend a weekend – impressive musicians, cool beach, warm evenings, hot friends, cold beer (kindly subsidised by the sponsors Heineken)… and best of all, it’s free ;-)