Saturday, 15 January 2005
We got home from Samut Sakhon totally exhausted after 5 pm, and all I wanted to do was take a nap, but no time for that! Had to change into nice clothes again to head to a dinner with school people again. We headed to River Hotel in our town for some kind of reunion. Wasn't quite sure at first what it was for, but all I knew was we were to present our English Program video we showed earlier in the day and give a little shpeel again for our program. Both Christy and I were so exhausted from Open House and traveling all afternoon. We just wanted to go to sleep, not sit through another 7 course Chinese dinner! But, little did we know we would be in for some entertainment!
Found out that we were there for a class reunion for our school, Bamrung Wittaya's class of 2511. Had to take my cell phone out to calculate that in American years. So, take away 543 from our year, and it's the class of 1968. At that time, our school was a boy's school, so the banquet room was filled predominantly with men, along with their families, old retired teachers, and our table of current administrators, our chaplain, and me and Christy. One table, as it was pointed out to me, had a lot of wealthy successful business men. Ajarn Ong-Ard commented that by the end of the night, many people would be drunk. As the waitressed passed out the glasses of whiskey (the most popular alcoholic drink here, besides beer), we watched woman after woman sing different Thai songs on stage. There must have been over a dozen different women. One would sing song, leave, and then the next one would come on stage. As I people watched throughout the evening, commenting on how no one was paying attention to the singing, and laughing about Thais sense of fashion, I began to see another part of Thai culture. I know it exists, and you hear a lot about it, but I hadn't seen it yet with my own eyes.
As the table of wealthy businessmen saw singers they liked, they would let the waitresses know. Then, the waitresses would escort the women to their table. These women would sit and eat with the men, keeping them company. I've seen it in Japanese culture too (Christy and I talked about the book Memoirs of a Geisha), and it became even more apparent to me tonight what a male dominated culture Thailand is. I started thinking about the many families we have here. For many, the father is the breadwinner, but he sometimes doesn't live with the wife and children, as he may have another wife, but he still supports the family. Oftentimes, there are many children and stepchildren. The wife just resumes motherly duties as the husband comes and goes as he pleases.
It was a bit odd to see these call girls with these drunk men at a Christian Mission school function. But, what was even more eye-boggling was when a guy started passing out Penthouse calendars to everyone! Apparently, he owns the Thailand company, along with other businesses, and is a very wealthy Bamrung Wittaya School graduate. He even gave them to our conservative women administrators, which yes, I am sure they are going to enjoy looking at naked, bare-breasted women!
Got home at 10:30 pm, totally exhausted! What a long day! We were almost going to go to a Teacher's Day event tomorrow, but it is a Buddhist event where the teachers give food offerings to the monks at 7 am, and then sit through a 4 hour lecture in Thai. But, our administrators told us we could skip it, as we probably wouldn't understand any of it. Gonna skip going to the market, as I usually do in the morning, and sleep in!
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