Xmas & New Year’s Eve

It looked for me that Christmas in Thailand did not happened… Yes, Warunee had a little “fake” Christmas tree in the living room, in the supermarket (Lotus) they sold Christmas decorations, at the counters everybody had a Christmas hat on and like in Europe the prices of some goods were higher than normal. But Christmas Day everybody had to work and the next day there was an almost normal “Saturday Market”. But of course Christmas is what you make of it yourself, so on Boxing Day we did on my request a “Family Lunch” with Benz, Both and Suripron at the restaurant of “my” resort. Next year, in our own house, I will try to do a better Christmas celebration…
Before the end of the year Siripron went to two Hospital End of Year parties, one of the small hospitals (the theme was color) and one of the big hospital in Sawang Daen Din (the theme was colorful).

Around New Year most of the working people had 4 days of, starting from December 31 and all the students had a leave from school for a week or more. Also people that work in Bangkok came home to celebrate New Year’s Eve.
On December 31 we went to Udon Thani (about 80 km to the west of Sawang Daen Din) to buy a New Year’s present for Siripron because I had promised her already a diamond ring. It is normal a Thai wife gets her diamond ring at her (Buddha) wedding.
The evening we were at a party at the house of Wannapa & Wutti, there was Karaoke, a visit of the family from Udon Thani and we did a lottery. Everybody had to buy something (food/drinks or kitchen/bathroom things) for around 200 Bht (ca. EUR 5) and we had to draw numbers. On January 1 I gave the ring to Siripron, in the morning we had a visit of some old school friends of Siripron (they came from Bangkok) and of course the Karaoke at Wutti’s was started up again.