The Farang Are Coming 5.0, J-food and The Ugly Truth

Saturday was a different kind of day.

I woke up at 5 a.m. in Pattaya, stark naked and cuddled up against my naked ex-girfriend.

By 6 am I was on the bus to Bangkok.

By 11 am I was at work.

For the past week I’d been reminding Penfold that we had an appointment at the gym at 1:30 following my scheduled 2-hour business appointment, but he sent me a message around ten in the morning to say he wouldn’t be able to keep the appointment.

This fucked up my schedule slightly since I had a date to go to the movies with the snuggler after the gym.  If I didn’t meet Penfold I was gonna find myself hanging around with nothing to do for a couple of hours, so I sent her an SMS to suggest meeting at 1:30 instead of 3:30.

She never answered that SMS.

Meanwhile, I got a message from the Dude asking if I was busy.  During a toilet break I called him to see what was up.  He was home, alone, bored and looking for something to do.  I told hime I’d need to talk to the snuggler then call him back.  He said that was fine.

I managed to call the snuggler before the meeting ended.  She was planning on seeing me at 1:30 as requested in the message, but hadn’t bothered to send me a confirmation.  I asked her if she wanted to have lunch and a beer with the Dude instead of the movies, but that the movies would be an option for after lunch.  She agreed.  She asked where we should meet.   I told her I’d call her back.

When my meeting ended around 1:15 I called the Dude again and we agreed to meet at Narai Pizza at Century Mall (Victory Monument) around 1:45.  I called the snuggler again to gave her the time and place.  It was set.

I arrived at the stroke of 1:45 and found the Dude waiting.  The snuggler was nowhere to be seen.  I called her.  She was downstairs doing some shopping and said she’d join us shortly.

Cool.

The Dude and I waited for her to arrive.  When she did we started talking about which pizza to order, but the snuggler cut in.  She couldn’t eat pizza.

Why not???

Well, I’d forgotten about the J-food Festival.

Residents of Thailand will probably know what I’m talking about.  Others probably won’t.  For myself, this it one aspect of Thai culture I’ve never explored to the limits of my curiosity and I understand only the most rudimentary elements of it.

The J-food festival is celebrated every year in the latter half of October and it lasts for 9 days.  It is essentially a celebration of a vegan lifestyle, with many Thais choosing to eat no animal products (including dairy), drink no alcohol and (for some anyway) to abstain from sex for some or all of the nine days of the festival.

The snuggler was committed to the vegan diet without alcohol for the full 9 days.  (The final day is either Monday or Tuesday this week, I’m not sure which).

This meant that the snuggler would not be eating pizza with us.  She also wouldn’t be drinking any alcohol — not a big change since she normally doesn’t drink much anyway, but I include the point for completeness’ sake.

Fortunately, the Narai — being a Thai company — had added three dishes listed on a special J-food menu that was given to us.  The snuggler ordered a J-food pasta while the Dude and I got a pizza and garlic cheese bread, as well as a couple of Singha beers.

When lunch was finished I was expecting the Dude to head home, but he said that he would be happy to come along to the movies as a third wheel.

We went upstairs to look at the movies schedule, and discussed all the options, which were split about evenly between Thai and English language movies.

In the end our decision was made by the snuggler who had very definite ideas about what she wanted to watch.  She wanted to see the romantic comedy The Ugly Truth, starring Gerard Butler and Katherine Heigl

The problem was that the movie wasn’t playing at the cinema in Century Mall, so we decided to hop the train to Siam Paragon.

We managed to get to Siam pretty quickly, buy tickets and then grab a couple of giant buckets of popcorn and drinks.

Inside the cinema I saw something I’d never seen before.   Even casual visitors to Thailand are generally aware that before every movie the King’s song is played and everyone in the cinema is required to stand throughout the minute or two that it takes to play.  It’s kind of like when the national anthem is played ahead of sports events in many countries in farangland.

It seems a little odd the first time or two that it happens, but you quickly get used to it, and people have to take it very seriously; people have been jailed for not standing, and one person a year or two back was charged with a crime because — although he was standing himself — he didn’t force another movie patron to stand who remained sitting during the song.

You can imagine my surprise when an Asian guy, sitting alone in the row in front of us never moved a muscle during the song — he sat slouched to his right in his seat throughout the song.

He was the person in the theater seated closest to the screen.  He looked to be Japanese or possibly Korean — I don’t think he was Thai.  At the end of the song there was a fair bit of noise as people re-took their seats, and the commotion seemed to startle the guy… he twitched, then looked over his shoulder.   I think there’s  a good chance that he never knew what was going on behind him or that the other 100 people in the theater were standing while he was slouching in blissful ignorance in his chair.

The movie itself was pretty much a formulaic romantic comedy from Hollywood.  It was neither better nor worse than the usual, which meant that the snuggler loved it and I was happy to be in the air conditioning for  a couple of hours.

Just minutes after the movie began to play my mobile phone started vibrating in my pocket.  For some stupid reason I had forgotten to change it to silent mode so I pulled it out saw an unfamiliar number on the screen and hit the “reject call” button.  A few moments later I got an SMS telling me that I had a voice mail message.

I wondered for a while about the identity of the caller, but the penny dropped about two minutes after the call — of course it would be Tony, my buddy from Australia.  I had traded emails with him earlier in the week telling him that I’d be in Pattaya for a couple of days but that I could meet him on Saturday in Bangkok.

Sure enough, coming out of the cinema I listened to the voice mail and it was Tony trying to make arrangements.  I asked the Dude and the Snuggler if they wanted to go with me to meet him and they both agreed.  We decided to get together at Hanrihans Irish Pub on Sukhumvit Soi 4.

We all found our way to the upper level of the pub where we occupied a couple of large and very comfortable leather sofas arranged on either side of a nice wooden coffee table.  The atmosphere was a bit club-like, and it is a setting — quiet and comfortable with good service — that was perfect for the four of us to chat in a relaxed fashion for an hour or so.

I hadn’t seen Tony for more than a year so it was nice to catch up, and since he had never met the Dude or the Snuggler before it was a livley, interesting and wide-ranging conversation.

Tony had plans to meet someone around 8:00, so we killed our happy hour drinks (half price drinks until 7 p.m.) and said goodnight to Tony just before 7:30.  I was drinking at a fairly light pace — two bottles of Singha at lunch and two Pints of the same at Hanrihans.

After Tony left the question was whether we should call it a night and go home, or continue.  We took a vote and it was unanimous for continuing.

Around 6:45 I had responded to a message from NurseRon and invited him to join us at Hanrihans.  He hadn’t showed up by the time we were leaving an hour later so I called him and gave him the revised destination… we were heading across the street to the Big Mango.  Ron said he’d join us there.

The Big Mango was it’s usual self.

Doctorbond was there drinking orange juice, watching football and winding down to the end of his three-week holiday.  He would be off to the airport early Sunday morning to return to Blighty.  He talked with me for a while and said he had enjoyed his trip and would be looking forward to the next one.

NurseRon showed up not long after we arrived.

Narai Pizza was a distant memory by this time, so we got food menus and ordered up.  The snuggler got some stir-fried vegetables and rice, the Dude went for a burger, and I did a double-header by ordering a Mango Muffin (sausage) as well as a Steak & Mushroom Pie.   The Muffin was as good as always but I have to say that the pie left me underwhelmed.

I supplemented the food with two more pints and some conversation with NurseRon.

By 10 o’clock I was winding down.  I’d slept only about two hours on Friday night in Pattaya, and I had a long workday ahead of me on Sunday.

The Dude was likewise running out of steam.  I offered to share a taxi home, but he opted to go on the BTS, which left the snuggler and I to make the quick run to Soi 22 in a meter taxi.

We got inside the room and the snuggler went in to take a shower.

I was asleep before she finished.  She didn’t even wake me up… I snoozed all night until my alarm went off at 9:30 this morning, announcing that it was time to go to work again.  Given that I slept through the night I never found out whether the Snuggler’s celebration of the J food festival includes a ban on sex or not.

It’s midnight Sunday now.  My workday is finished, the snuggler is long gone and a new work week is right around the corner.

My ex-girlfriend from Pattaya called twice on Saturday night while I was with the snuggler.  The first call came while we were in Hanrihans.  Fortunately I was on the phone with NurseRon at the time so the call came in on call waiting and didn’t cause the phone to ring.  I put my mobile on silent after that, in case my ex girlfriend decided to revive some of her past craziness and start calling again and again.

She didn’t, though.  She called just one more time around 11:30, long after I was snoring loudly in my room and oblivious to the world.

I called her back this afternoon and chatted with her.  She sounded happy and relaxed, with no sign of going crazy because I hadn’t answered the phone last night.

Who knows… maybe everything will turn out okay.