Bangkok Karaoke

You may remember my good friend Sanga, who I met when I was last in Bangkok a couple of weeks ago. I phoned him today and he set a place for me to meet him.

I think Sanga has figured out my navigational skills are not of the highest calibre so he asked me to meet him in front of the 'Standing Buddha', a monument as tall as the Space Shuttle. I only got lost twice getting there...

Sanga, invited me to meet him and his girl fiend at their local Haunt, a Thai restaurant in the north part of the city. Finally, I was going to have a chance to really experience the Thai culture, uncensored and happening!

When I got there I learned the truth. A British soccer match on the big screen TV, and American music blaring from the speakers in this quaint Thai restaurant. The food was authentic though. We had another of those fish that Vivyan identified for me from My Dinner With Sanga. They leave the head on and I swear it was looking at me.

When we arrived, a woman took us to our table and Sanga mumbled something about it being his girlfriend. I was confused for a few minutes until I finally pieced together that she was his girlfriend but she was also our waitress, because she works at this place part time. I would have taken a picture of Poony and Sanga together but she was too shy. They made a lovely couple though. Poony is studying to be a computer tech, I think, but that night she was trying to translate an English scientific paper into Thai, which talked about the refraction properties of light. I told her that I had trouble reading it too and it was all in English. My dad used to make a lot of money translating this kind of stuff into English that regular people could read. When I told her it wasn't her, it was those scientists who couldn't communicate, she seemed relieved.

This is Ni (pronounced like n+it but without the 't'. She is one of the other 5 waitresses at the restaurant. She is also in charge of the Karaoke machine. It wasn't long before she had dragged me up to the stage and away we went.

I asked Ni to sing a popular Thai song and I agreed to try to sing along. This is us singing...wait for it... Hey Jude.

Then it was Sanga's turn. He sung some haunting Thai songs to his sweetie. She got up next and sung a song that Ni told me was about a woman who loves a man but he doesn't know it. After that it was a rampage as the various patrons jumped up for their chance to sing.

I don't mean to brag, but it's my blog so I'm going to anyway. I did a rendition of Love me Tender that brought down the House. Everyone in Thailand seems to know who Elvis is and I was the closest they were going to get tonight. I had never even tried Karaoke before, but I think I'm onto something. Ni thought I was great.

See Dennis, you're not the only one who can get chicks!