Chinatown

I went to Chinatown last night for the Chinese New Year celebration to welcome in the year of the rooster! That's my year, by the way. I dressed up in a new shirt with a mandarin collar and gold chinese emblem on the front and my floor-length jean skirt, and my friends Gus and Duk called me "China doll" all night. My friend Kari and I took the river taxi down into Chinatown. I love the river taxi. It's so relaxing, and the trip is beautiful in the evening. As the sun sets all of the little waterfront restuarants and hotels begin to light up, and the river boats all sparkle with strings of twinkle lights. As soon as we got off of the pier, the sights, sounds, smells, and crowds overwhelmed our senses. My eyes were everywhere trying to take in all of the festivities as I was swept along by the current of people. The area was crammed with venders, food carts, wandering musicians, beggars, children in costume, monks. There were stages set up on either end of Chinatown with various performances going on, bands playing, traditional dance, etc. Kari and I were hungry, so we bought some wontons munch on. Well, one of my wontons drooled all over my foot, so I walked around all night with sticky wonton juice in my toes. We didn't do much more than drift around staring at everything and taking pictures.

At the end of our evening we ran into some of the other teachers from the school that Kari teaches at and I live at, we shared a cab ride home. Well, the fun didn't end there. Our cab driver, seeing that we were farong coming from Chinatown on the Chinese New Year, thought that we might be in the mood for a bit of tourism. He gave us a full tour completely in Thai of the government buildings, royal residences, wats (temples), and a zoo in Bangkok on our way home. He was a lot of fun. We tried really hard with our limited Thai to understand some of the tour, and to converse with him. I think he really appreciated the effort. There was plenty of laughter in the cab on the way home.