Continued—
At the beginning of the fourth day I was not in the mood to spend another day on the beach. I felt that I was wasting my time and energy doing nothing; if I am in the amazing country I should be learning and absorbing its great history right? So Off I went to a tourist trap to really rejuvenate myself by walking in a park and taking photos of rock formations boasted to be a million years old (The million Years Stone Park and Crocodile farm/albino/tiger zoo).
It was a beautiful day and a beautiful park filled with vibrant greens whites, purples, blues and this that and the other. The zoo/farm part, however, made me physically sick. The way they treated/treat the animals would make PETA into a monster of animal’s rights, but we are not in America. They treat animals differently, sadly…I would go into more detail and will if you ask, but why bring every down…
Needless to say, I stayed in the park section most of the time (after some pics of the other sections). I did get the chance to pet a crocodile, an elephant (I figured as the national symbol of Thailand I should while I was there) and a four year old tiger (which I wanted to do so badly). I even had the chance to bottle feed a four month old tiger cub and if I didn’t mention it in my last post I held a baby lemur. I loved getting to interact with the animals; I just wish the animals had better conditions to interact with me in…
After the park I returned to Pattaya and having made myself sick over the animals I relaxed on the beach for an hour and in the hotel room for about 30 min. Brooke and I made plans to go to a restaurant with Traditional Thai dance and puppet theatre that night. A little detail/background information: Joe Louis (place name/person name) is a direct descendant of the royal puppeteers. His family and he are the only people in Thailand who can authentically make these traditional puppets based upon the originals from hundreds of years ago. The dance company works directly under the King Sister. Even the youngest performers have studied dance professionally for sixteen plus years. They could really make these puppets come alive and especially that first night the dancers’ energy, pride and enthusiasm radiated from their performance.
Now, you are going to assume I learned all of that by reading a program, but the theatre hosted no information about who and what they were other than and world famous theatre and restaurant. Several things happened during the performance. One: Questions kept occurring to us about different aspects of the performance-mine more technical and hers more personal, but enough to make us wonder how we might be able to talk to the actors. Two: A couple of the actors kept watching us and “playing” with us through the floral pieces that made up the scenery/”backstage” area. Lastly: we found out were their dressing rooms were and that they were rather accessible to be able to go up to and talk to …
So we made a stop in the bathroom on our way out debating whether or not to approach and see if any of them spoke English and could answer our questions. While there one of the dancers came in and we started to talk to her and she took us to a better English speaker/kind of a leader-ish of the group who answered all of our questions and even took us into the dressing rooms to see the puppets and masks. We even got to hold the one puppet (12-ish pounds) and see these beautiful costumes and designs up close…After 30 minutes or so we were still talking and it was time for the company to leave so they invited us to go with them: Saay, Bird, (S)Top, Jit, Hugo, Gun, and several others (only a couple spoke English a lot of translating back and forth happened)…They had never before had foreigners so interested in what they did on stage or in getting to know them—Saay said kindred spirits brought us together.
They took us dancing and introduced me to a Thai specialty called Ya Dong which is equivalent to moonshine-made locally and sold locally and tasting like a blend of bottom shelf tequila and bottom shelf whiskey left to ferment…it was disgusting, but very nice of them to introduce me properly to Thai culture. They asked us to return the next night and after a day on the beach that is what we did. That night we had Iranians, French, Thai, American (Korean), Russian, German, and British represented at some point or another. The ones that played shy the night before were more vocal and entertaining. It was another great night.
The problem was we were supposed to be leaving for Bangkok the next day. Truthfully at that point I had given up on historical culture and was enjoying learning about theatre and general Thai culture and Brooke just didn’t want to leave the beach and our new friends asked us to stay through New Years…so we did…
TO BE CONTINUED
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