Karaoke Party ;)

On last Thursday, Jan 18th, I went to this Karaoke place called Baimairareong (Thai; ใบไม้ร่าเริง, Translation; cheerful leaf) with my friends from where I work part-time.

A little info about the place, just in case you are in Bangkok and feel like karaoke.. (By the way, it's not a bar, it's a restaurant & Karaoke.)
There are several branches of Baimairareong, one near Kasetsart University by Vibhawadi Hospital, one in Asoke area, Bangna, and probably a few more.

The one near Kaset U. opens daily from 5pm-1am.
Phone: 0-2561 – 5300 (In case you wanna make a reservation)


Price list;
Small Room (6-7 ppl) 200 Baht/hour
Medium Room (10-15 ppl) 1000-1200 Baht all night
Large Room (30 ppl) 2500 Baht
It is recommended that you book ahead on Fri-Sat nights.
Mixers: 25 Baht and if you bring your own alcohol, it's 200 Baht fee per bottle.

Photos from www.manager.co.th

Since some of my friends were still at work, Fame and I got there first. It was around 6pm, and I just started singing because so there were many songs I wanted to sing, and I'd have less chance of picking the songs when everyone arrived :P

Hmm..which song shall I sing...

I started with mostly English songs, unfortunately, there weren't as many English songs as Thai ones..but it was still ok, I dug up some old songs like, "Saving All My Love For You", "Take Me Home Country Road", stuff like that, haha.

Soon after, Beer arrived around 7 and we started to get it going. He's really damn good at singing. He's gay, by the way, so he's a big fan of Mariah, Whitney, etc. He could sing all Mariah's songs so well, not just his voice, but his moves also!! Just like a Diva!

Me, Fame, and Beer the Diva!

Here's a clip of us singing "Crazy" by Britney Spears...


Then the rest of us, P'Whyte, May, and Jareuk came after they finished work. We ordered sooooo much food. The food there was AWESOME!!! VERY VERY DELICIOUS!!

Beer the Diva, Jareuk, Fame, May, and P'Whyte

The song list they had was pretty good. Unfortunately, not enough Britney's, Mariah's, and Whitney's, but it's still pretty good :) Many Thai songs and a lot of Chinese ones also (too bad, none of us could sing Chinese songs, hehe.

P'Whyte picking a song ;)

Let's POSE!!

Singing some Hip-Hop stuff with Jareuk, my sis (yeah, my sister :P)

Beer the Diva, Fame, and Jareuk :)

A lot of singing tonight!!

Jareuk, doing a rap solo :P

My good friends from work, they really make it difficult for me to quit the job!

Call Center girls with the headsets! hehe..(yeah..all girls)

Too bad, another friend, Pakorn, couldn't come until 11 something because he got off work at 11pm. He's like a diva also!! (yes, he's gay.) So at the end, I made Pakorn and Beer did some duet diva stuff, hehe.

Clips from the Party..the Divas! First one is "Hero" by Mariah Carey, another is "When You Believe" by Mariah and Whitney..





So yeah, it was a hell lot of fun that night! And guess what? 6 hours of karaoke was not enough for us!!! There were so many songs that we wanted to sing, but we ran out of time!!! We are definitely gonna do it again :)

Sorry if the clips are quite dark..but you could still hear the sound, right!? :)
*Kisses to my readers*

Thai Monks These Days...

It's just a quick rant about Thai monks I've encountered recently. By the way, I'm a Buddhist, although not a big religious hardcore one, but I'm sure I know the concepts of Buddhism...and I'm happy the way I am.

So yeah, I don't know if many people have been realzing it lately about how degraded Thai monks (or Buddhism in Thailand) are these days. This is not an excuse for me to not go making merits or donation to the temples (even though, actually, I'd rather donate my money or other things to those who need, like orphans, poor people, etc.)

A photo of Thai monks in general...

It's been going on for quite a long time now as we can see in the news (probably just Thai news) about monks committing crimes, such as rapes, robbery, dog fucking..if you include that as a crime also. Also, whenever I go to Pantip Plaza(big IT mall), I always find monks there.
Just in case if you guys are not buddhists; Monks are supposed to detached from materialistic world and devote themselves to Dharmma or something like that. I don't know much about the details but the main concepts are like, monks live at the temple, detached from materialism, practise dharma, pray, being a role model of good buddhists for people, blah blah blah...maybe trying to reach nirvana but that's almost impossible and too idealistic.

Anyway, what I see these days are monks hanging around at the malls, buying computer games, pornos, and shit. WTF??! That's not what they are supposed to do! I mean, I would reluctantly accept the point that monks come to get computer so they can apply new technology to teaching dharma or something. But...pornos??!!! there's no explanation needed, is there?

Monks praying...a usual Buddhist ceremony...

Let's see what else, this is what really happening, sorry that I don't have a proof like photos or whatever..but it's my experience. An aquaintance of mine at my university, he had to do the monk thing for a short period of time due to the Buddhist tradition that guys at the age of 20(or 21, something like that) should enter the monkhood, so their parents can go to heaven and stuff. Anyway, his mom made him do it, so yeah..it's not his own will..but can't you just suck it up though, if that's what your mom wants? Well, he kinda did but not so well, I mean, he entered the monkhood, being monk for awhile..but playing computer games, talking to chicks on the phone while we was doing it. And I think that's just so wrong.

Not like I haven't done such things, I did stay at the temple before for a week, practising dharma for my level (women can't be monks here btw, not this sect of Buddhism), living with no cellphones, getting up at 4am to do the pray thing, reading dharmma books, etc. It wasn't bad at all, I found myself calmer in a lot of ways..but once you come back to the real world...you kinda turn back to who you were before, though, hehe.

...People give food to the monks..

So where was I, oh yeah, there are news that monks use MSN, chat with girls, then lure them to come to the temple and fuck the girls. Well, I wouldn't just blame it on monks only, those girls are wrong also, I mean, if once I found out the guy I was chatting with was a monk, I'd be so repulsed. Besides, isn't it a big turn-off, shagging monks?!! Oh lord...

Sorry for such a long rant, I didn't expect to go on this long, but my real point of the story is that on Sunday 14th, I just went to my grandpa's funeral. It's a 100th day anniversary of his death (another Buddhist thing, sorry if I don't know what it's called properly.) We made an appointment with the head of the monks at the temple (which he forgot, by the way, so unorganized this temple, my aunt offered him a whiteboard so he could write down appointments and he just got pissed off saying that she insulted him, thinking he's too old, blah blah..ridiculous)

Anyway, we were there, setting up the food for monks. The ceremony was quite simple, the monks and us prayed, then we gave monks the food(and it was really nice food, what a good life being a monk these days), waited till they are done eating, then desert, then prayed some more, and it's done. Then we could eat, not necessarily the monks' leftover, we prepared extra food for ourselves. Even though some people think it's good to eat the monks' leftover, but I disagree with that. Monks are still human, especially these days, many of them are not good monks, I just find it disgusting to eat their leftover.

Young monks playing gameboy...

Wait, where's my point? Ok, during the praying thing, we were like, listening to the prayer, right? (It's Pali language and I don't understand a word, I know..quite impractical, no wonder there are many superficial Buddhists these days, including me probably.) So, when we were all quiet, listening to the prayer, and suddenly..one monk's cellphone just went off.................WTF?!?

Yes the cellphone fucking rang, and he answered the phone in the middle of the pray while other monks were still praying. That was sooo not acceptable. Come on, it's already rude and inconsiderate to have your phone goes off during the meeting or in class. But this!! during the pray! a monk!! it's just wrong at many levels; why a monk needs a cellphone? shouldn't he live a quiet life in the temple? ok next, why can't he just turn it off while he's on duty? since being a monk these days is like a job that you make a living out of it already. Want me to go on???

Gosh, it just shows how screwed up it is in the society nowadays. So ironic, so hypocritical Thailand is. The government, the beaurocracy, the Buddhist society that people claim it plays a major part in Thai society..they are all hypocritical, impractical, and useless. Don't even get me started...

Sorry for such a long post. I really intended to keep it short, but I just got carried away :P

Please be noted that the pictures here are from google and they have nothing to do with bad monks that I mentioned above.

New Year Party@FCC

Ok, first of all, FCC is where I have been working part-time for over a year and a half. And this New Year party we had was just last night. Yea yea..it's 12th already, so what? it's not too late for a party, right?

Anyway, the party this year was "FCC Fantasia Party", we were supposed to come up with some costume for this fancy party. As a result, we just put on some dress that we don't normally wear on the daily basis..I know it's not cool, but the pay day is on 15th, so..who the hell is gonna pay for the costume? right?

So I just digged up my wardrobe and here it is... some Nana whore costume stuff happening!!

Anyway, our department, CSR (Customer Service Representative) was supposed to come up with some shows for the party. We had 2 shows prepared, my friends and I were gonna be the 3rd one, but due to the lack of time for rehearsal and the stage was quite small, we decided to call it off.

P'Nui & I

P'May, P'Sab, and P'Nok...looks like a groom and 2 brides!

I call them P' because they are older and also have worked longer than I have. They were pretty dressed up as if they were going to a wedding or something! It seemed like we were at a totally different party, didn't it?

With Nong Oil

P'Aum, getting ready for the show. She was gonna be singing. (I just found out that she sings really good!!)

P'May, May, Korn, Oil, P'Nui, and Jareuk

Since the first show from CSR was P'Aum singing and Aom playing guitar, the next show was an astonishing cross-dressing, kateoy cabaret like one performed by Beer and P'Kay. I really think it's Beer's idea because he's very very creative, plus his costume and make-up skills...he could pull off such a fantastic show like this. I think Beer and P'Kay got inspired by Beyoncé Knowles and the movie Dreamgirls

Beyoncé from Dreamgirls

Beer from FCC, hehe

P'Kay

On Stage!

Beer doing solo, some Mariah combined with Whitney stuff!!

After the performance

Big Mama and her girls! (Neung, P'Kay, Ploy, and P'Nok)

(By the way, Neung's dress reminds me of Air France flight attendant uniform by Christian Lacroix, don't you think?)

Air France Uniform (Ok, not exactly the same style..but at least same colors!)

Bee, P'Ying (quite scary red lips there!), and Neung

With Jareuk, Fame, May, and Beer

Jareuk, May, Beer, and Oil

With Miss Zimbabwe!! :P

Wooo~~~!!! Happy New Year!

Golden Mount Visit

This trip was awhile ago..well actually, it was the Golden Mount fair in November. I've never been to this temple, Wat Saket, before..so it's quite an interesting trip :)

Wat Saket Ratcha Wora Maha Wihan (Thai: วัดสระเกศราชวรมหาวิหาร, usually short Wat Saket) is a Buddhist temple (Wat) in Bangkok, Thailand.
The temple dates back to Ayutthaya era when it was called Wat Sakae. King Rama I renovated the temple and renamed it to Wat Saket. During the reign of King Rama III the Chedi Phu Khao Thong (Golden mountain, ภูเขาทอง) was added to the temple. It was finished under King Rama V and then named Suwannabanphot. This building has become one of most popular the touristical places in Bangkok, however the other buildings of the temple are much less visited. (Thanks wikipedia for the info)

So around the beginning of November before Loy KraTong festival each year, there's a fair at this temple, The Golden Mount Fair. It's actually not different from other temple fairs, only that you will get the old school feeling because this fair has been going on for a long time, you know, like..ferris wheel, merry-go-round for lil children, many food stalls, old-school-fake freak shows, and ladies in the water game! (sound weird, eh? I just dont know what's it called exactly..so I made that name up myself, hehe)

A small little ghetto ferris wheel:)

Ladies in the water game :)

This "Ladies in the water" game thing that I named it myself, you just basically try to throw the balls at the target. If it hits the target, the girl will fall into the water barrel and gets wet. This is very old school, you don't get to see it as much nowadays. Yes, it's quite a sexist, perverted game. I guess it used to be some sort of treat for guys back in the old days to satisfy their little sexual need...(Don't get me wrong, I'm not a feminist.)

A creepy merry-go-round, looks like a scene from a ghost movie!

Mermaid Show

I was lucky that the day I went was the last day of the fair, so they had a ceremony right at the top of the Golden Mount. I'm not sure yet about the purpose of the ceremony itself and the history of it. But it seems to me like during the Buddhist Lent period until the last day of the Fair, they covered the Golden Mount with a red curtain and would remove it on the last day of the Fair. (Please correct me if I'm wrong)

Me and my big ass on the way to the top

The red curtain covering the Golden Mount

Some crew went up and removed the curtain

See how high the Golden Mount is??!

View from the top of the Golden Mount
People make donation to the temple by putting money around it
This is part of the ceremony, the monks would pray and walk around the Golden Mount clockwise 3 times with people following them.

The Candles Display :)