Haven't written in months. Sorry. Here are some videos

Rak Hang Siam (Love of Siam). Big deal Thai movie which caused a whole controversy because it was advertised as a cute teenage love movie with two girls and two boys, but really the girls had about 10 minutes of screen time and it was about the boys. Together. And they kissed! Ah! I thought the movie was pretty good. Long, like three hours or something, but I liked it. It was a nice change from the ridiculous Thai comedies I usually see.

This is the big hit from the movie. The singer is Q from the band Flure (one of the bands I wanted to see at Fat Festival but sadly missed).



Another big movie soundtrack hit. I may have posted it before. It's Pop from Calories Blah Blah and Da from Endorphine. For my friend Josh's birthday I gave him a karaoke VCD so he could practice these songs and this was supposed to be our big duet at my 4 hour all-star karaoke session right before I left. But neither or really practiced as much as we should have...



A Thai ska band! I watched their video for the first track during my first Thai karaoke experience in the mall booth in September 2006, but for some reason it didn't make it into my standard karaoke repertoire. I've tried a couple of times since then and now I can mostly keep up with the chorus, but years away on the verses.



Hmm... maybe what made me think of them recently is the fact that the weekend I came home there was a huge ska and reggae festival in Pai! GGGRRRRRRRR! I wish I could have gone. But all these groups I dig that were up there, their videos on youtube aren't that good, or don't even exist. Teddy Ska Band, T-Bone, and my girl Palmy!!!

But she's all over the youtube. So quick update, I'm home now, but between November (when I stopped working at AUA) and February 10th (when I came back to New York) I was actually way busier than this blog would have you believe. It was because I was so busy that I couldn't update the blog. Kinda.

The biggest thing by far was my family coming for two weeks. After a day in Bangkok followed by a ridiculous weekend in Pattaya (strangest/grossest/saddest place I've ever been) I met up with my brother in Bangkok and caught a flight back to Chiang Mai. We rented motorbikes and biked around the mountains of Northern Thailand, where we strangely ran into two old students of mine who met in my class, have been dating since, moved to this middle of nowhere town about 50 kms out of Chiang Mai where they live together and teach English together at the local school. Weird, huh? So Alex and I ended up having Christmas dinner at Lux (Thai girl) and Manu's (French boy) house. We had kow ka mu, which means pork leg (with pork leg sauce) on rice! Delicious!

The rest of the motorbike trip was fun. We visited some hill tribes which were super chill and not the kind where they chase with you crap to buy. We took scary dirt roads. We got lost once but in a fun way. I got to speak a lot of Thai while trying to make sure we got un-lost.

The second day we did the same thing but didn't get lost. Got back to Chiang Mai in time to meet the rest of the Charpe.... party of 8 at the airport and checked into the hotel I had dreamed about staying in since 2005. It was magical.

So when the fam was here we did tons of cool stuff. We stayed a night at Elephant Nature Park, we did a cooking class at an organic farm, visited the highest peak in Thailand, spent an afternoon in a bamboo hut on a lake eating more awesome food, went to the mall, saw my neighborhood, ate at the restaurant with the hands-down nicest view of Chiang Mai, hit up the Sunday Market and walked around the city visiting temples and seeing other cute things.

So... at these temples you can talk with monks. Awesome. I used to go when I first moved to Chiang Mai. Not that I had too many questions about Thailand or Buddhism, but my friend had told me they're awesome to practice Thai with and they're generally cool guys too. But back then I only went, hmm.... 3 times.

So fast-forward a year and a half and I bring my family back. While I'm there one of them says, "Wait, you live here? You teach English?" "Come to Chiang Rai with us on January 25th to January 27th. You can teach English to poor children."

Ok! So, I keep in touch (via cell phones and email, love it!) with my monk contacts and January 25th I find myself sitting in a songtaew (red truck) across from a row of monks with some mango and pomelo trees between us. Nuts!

The weekend was amazing. Twenty monks, 10 Thai uni students, 9 foreigners. We went to an Akha village in Chiang Rai province. It took three different truck changes to get us there. We played soccer, we gave ice cream, we taught them head shoulders knees and toes, played a ton of games, we gave a ton of stuff (food, clothing, school and sports supplies) and taught some English. It was amazing. Saturday night, there was a big show. The Akha kids had all prepared little shows, the uni students prepared some shows and they wanted the foreigners to do something too. Paige (my friend who I dragged along even though she thought she was sick) and I stepped up and did our respective things. She played guitar and sang a song she wrote (she does that in real life too) and I, FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER, sang a Thai pop song acapella, and it happened to be in front of an entire village. When I got to Thailand one of my goals was to sing a Thai pop song in front of people. So to do it acapella and in a hill tribe was way beyond anything I could have hoped for. I didn't sing it from memory, but I did read the lyrics ALL IN THAI! YES! A friend wrote them out for me and I held the paper with my shaky little hand while Paige held the flashlight so I could read it. Cause I was holding the mic and the lyrics. Amazing.

Anyway, here's the song I sang. So, my performance was kind of like this except replace her hair with a messy ponytail, the hippie dress with jeans and a hoodie, the stage and the band with a plastic chair and Paige holding a flashlight, and the audience of excited teenagers jumping up and down with a village of pretty quiet Akha people sitting around a really big fire. And I didn't repeat the chorus three times.



Easy song, huh?

So after the trip I stopped by the exchange some pictures, so I had my computer and they knew I had music videos so they wanted to watch some. Phra Em was looking at the titles and one was titled (by the record label) "OK HUK". So he said "O.K. hook? What's that?" I said, "No, no, it's Thai! You know it." and I tried saying it in all the different ways I could think of so they would recognize it. I failed. Finally I played the song and he said, "Ooooooh!! Awk hak! Ha ha O.K. hook, awk hak!" Yeah, I know, English sucks, right? He thought it was the funniest thing ever and started asking the other monks if they knew "O.K. hook". Also interesting about this video - the whole time Phra Em watched this video he was waiting to show me something. I kept guessing but he just said, "wait, wait, wait....." And then finally at 3:15 into the video, "Ah. Yes. When I am not a monk anymore, I will do that." Check it out. I asked if he could have someone video it and please email it to me. This kid has been walking around wrapped in an orange robe for the past 9 years.



Next up - What I was doing between November and February.
Then - How I know I'm not in Thailand anymore.

Still my favorite Thai music video of all time.