Red Label times

Let me start out with mentioning that I am back in the States. I just arrived home some 2 hours ago with my luggage and an entire box of xeroxed statistical books and publications we found over the course of our fieldwork in Thailand. Luckilly, I was just in charge of getting the box home. It is someone else's job to go through it all, catalogue the items, and figure out what is useful as we continue writing the report over the summer.

I've been up more or less for the past 24 hours, so if I make some typing errors, please understand.

Last night was a hell of an evening. We started out on one of those packaged riverboat dinner cruises up the Chao Phraya river. The buffet-style dinner was lame, but the cruise redeems itself because you get nice views of the Dawn Temple and the suspension bridge. The food was terrible - I guess I have been in Thailand long enough to know what is good and bad Thai food. This stuff was a mess of sorts. The Chinese tourists on the boat plowed through it before we'd even put our drink orders in. My Thai student friend said that Chinese tour groups have that reputation. The food itself was just sort of bland, with some strange fusion cuisine going on - Thai spaghetti sauce and noodles - apparently some type of concession to the Italian and American contingent on the boat.

At dinner we consumed several bottle of overpriced, weak red wine. But since all was being paid for by our professor, we made little attempt to restrict our beverage intake. After the cruise ended (which included some dancing on the deck of the boat) we went to a place in Suhkhimvit called Rewind. Rewind is a bar that has djs and live music on the weekends. The owner of Rewind is a friend of our Thai host, Pitch Ponsagawat. When I got there, it appeared a waitress was already taking our group's first drink order. At this point the evening took a decisive new turn of direction for not only us, but for our esteemed professor.

Soon after the first bottle of Red Label showed signs of near-emptiness, our professor was out on the dance floor. In fact, out of 20 students attending the event, he was the first person out there rocking out like he was born to boogie. It was amazing. And it all continued with ramped up intensity for the next 3 hours.

The evening ended with smaller groups taking cab rides home, a quick shower, throwing my belongings into my suitcase, turning in my dorm key, running back upstairs to leave our maid a tip, and then being raced to the airport at 3:20 am.