Happy Birthday and see you soon, Pippa!!

January 27th was the birthday of out best friend, Pippa. It was also the last night before she went to Bangkok to study German. In other words, an excuse for yet another party! We arrived at her house at about 4pm after cycling the 8km and found Pippa, Butschi, Pippa's parents and a few guys from the village outside her house preparing food. We jumped right in and started chopping up garlic, nice and long like we were asked, only to have it shredded by Butschi who decided we were doing them for him. We then chopped up more garlic for the man who originally asked for it. After this, it was time to pluck a duck. Actually, two ducks. The wings were tricky, but I think we did okay! We got called "geng" which means skillful or clever which is good!

The guests started arriving at about 6.30pm, and Butschi started his barbeque. It was really quite funny how the party progressed - about 10 women from the village brought food and sat down on mats outside drinking, slowly getting more and more drunk. 4 village children (Pee An and Pee Biew's two sons, Donut and another girl) were on the edge of the mat playing with toy giraffes and cars. The men sat at the decking getting very drunk, and us crazy farang wandered around speaking very broken Thai, singing karaoke and taking photos! The main food was barbequed pork and beef which was really nice - Butschi was trying to do as western a barbeque as he could, and it worked out well! There was also sticky rice and something we think is made from duck which we think is called "rappit", but we're not entirely sure... it is delicious though!

As I've said before, karaoke is huge in Thailand which is actually a really good thing because I am getting much more confident singing in front of people! I don't know if this will last in the UK because the brilliant thing about Thailand is that people really don't care if you're bad, it's all just for fun, whereas in the UK people are slightly more critical... but I've done karaoke so many times now that people know that "my songs" are Because Of You by Kelly Clarkson and When You Say Nothing At All by Ronan Keating. Pippa absolutely loves the film "Notting Hill" so always requests that I sing "When You Say Nothing At All" which is the main song from it. Caitlin and I also sung "I Will Survive" together, pretending to fight with each other as we did so which went down well!
Caitlin and I managed to get some holy rope from a teacher at NaKaePitt. This is thin white rope which people tie aroudn other people's wrists to bless them. You tie a knot in the rope first, and this is meant to hold the blessing. We took this rope to Pippa's and blessed her, Butschi and Pippa's parents. Other people had brought holy rope too, so there was a small blessing ceremony which was really nice. When you get blessed you are meant to wai with the hand that isn't getting the rope, and people around you touch you to get some luck from your blessing. They also wai with the hand which isn't touching you.

It was a really nice evening and everyone really enjoyed themselves. I really love parties like this because they are so laid back and fun without being over the top. Nothing makes me feel like part of the community more than sitting outside with a group of people from the village simply eating, talking, laughing and having fun. It's really nice that although I don't speak a huge amount of Thai, and most people in the village don't speak much English, when we all sit together I can be completely part of what's going on and understand what people are talking about because the village makes an effort to include us, and we make an effort to be included. In the UK a lot of parties are about how sexily you can dress, how drunk you can get and how many times you can pull. Parties here are about being with friends and family and having a great time with each other.
On Friday we arrived at Pippa's house at about 4pm after travelling to her house not in the back of someone's pickup... Her bus left to Bangkok at about 5.45pm, so we spent the time sitting outside with her, Butschi, her parents and a couple of people who were getting the same bus. It was really sad to see her go, but under her orders we weren't allowed to cry :P Her and her parents have said that we are welcome to stay at her house in Ban Phon Sanuk whenever we like, and we have to look after her flowers.