Promotional Furry Friends

The best medicine

It's impossible to stay sad in Bangkok.

I had a couple of errands to do yesterday. The first job took me to the heart of Ratchaprasong, Bangkok's shopping district. This area was where the Red Shirts made their camp. The 'Together We Can' campaign, instigated by the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration attempted to liven up central Bangkok have been promoting all kinds of projects over recent weeks. A couple of weekends ago, Silom became a walking street full of market vendors; Ratchaprasong saw volunteers planting up some of the areas that had been damaged during the unrest.

Yesterday, outside Amarin mall, were was another shopping promotion going on: big signs boasted 70 - 80 % off and there were some night market stalls along the pavement. I was on the walkway when I spotted this video opportunity.

Something went wrong in the uploading to YouTube process so I've lost the sound but you'll still see why I couldn't help but feel happy. (Any shaking of the camera will be due to my laughter.)

I love this place.

Halloween's here

Bangkok prepares for Halloween 2008

One of my favourite costumes: Son on Halloween 2006 (I thought it was last year but my records say not).

We gave untold small children in our condo nightmares that year.

Dressing up

I am on new words today but I slipped out to get some money and a Starbucks this morning so that I could pay the IT man that's coming to boost our wifi. I know that not having wifi in my office should be a really good thing that keeps me writing, but unfortunately I've become so cold turkey I can't write unless I get it boosted to reach my little room.

While I was out I saw two promo girls: one in front of the Grammy building and one inside. Both were giving out freebies (a sachet of sugar or a sachet of tissues). This is really Thai and it always makes me chuckle. They seem such an introverted people such a lot of the time and yet they appear to love to dress up in extraordinary outfits to sell things. I still can't quite forgive Husband for telling me about the girls dressed in American tan coloured body stockings who were bathing in a cup of coffee! He saw this downstairs in his office building and didn't have a camera. I don't go anywhere without a camera and haven't done for nearly three years.

Funky t-shirt

There's a lot of debate in the press here about reading: how the average Thai reads two books a year. Whether this is or isn't accurate there have been a notable number of book related festivals in the two years plus that I've been here.

Here's another promotion I saw in Siam Paragon Mall yesterday.