Ladyboy Christmas
This year, we were very lucky to be able to spend Christmas on a beach in Thailand. Even luckier, we were able to meet up with another Canadian couple, Julia and Jeff, whom we had met at the ger camp when we were all in Mongolia. Odd to think that we had met six months ago and only knew each other 36 hours before deciding to spend the holidays together, but we had a brillant time comparing travel stories and toasting our good fortune at actually having somplace to stay.
As mentioned in Marc’s post, we had spent a great deal of our time in Bangkok fooling around with reservations and such because this is ultra-high season and things are booked up right good and full. We were ecstatic to have found a couple of bungalow rooms at this place on Ton Sai beach, Krabi, even though we were paying over double the normal price and were obliged to partake in a compulsary, and relatively expensive gala celebration on Christmas Eve.
All week, we four had been joking about how we would make the most of this gala. Presumably, it would be buffet-style which would mean that we, the compulsary attendees, would be compelled to pull our chairs directly up to the shrimp platter and become bottomless pits. As it turns out, there were no shrimp, but plenty of thai food, some really well-done roast beast, a little turkey and a super ladyboy show.
After a few warm-up numbers, for which we applauded loudly from our front row seats wearing our festive elf hats, the feature act was announced, ‘Not only does Thailand have some of the prettiest ladyboys in the world, some of them were here to perform for us tonight!’ What followed was an excellent performance by some pretty ladyboys with outstanding costumes. The best part was when one of the solo acts descended from the stage to mingle with the crowd and made his way over to our table to dance with Julia. Truly, this was a Christmas highlight.
On Christmas Day, we spend a laid-back afternoon in the sun drinking Chang beer and floating in the sea before sharing some thai food at a beach-front place near our bungalows. We shared our first bottle of wine in a couple of months and had a grand time toasting everything.
P.S. For gifts this year, I got a cold and Marc got a bad case of heat stroke. Merry Christmas.