Singing and clapping Happy Birthday around midnight for Cid... the chocolate cake in the front with 9 candles, if not mistaken, hehe. Its part of the traditional way of celebrating ones birthday........ people come to you to give you encouragements for your futur and best wishes and then singing for you at midnight. To the right you see a 'flower' arrangement, made completly by Kik and his good friend from Simons, known as Boy, as a encouragement gift for Cid. They have been working on this structure, made out of banana leaves and little flowers, which is made by very good friends or family for someone who has a special occasion. The bowl in which it stands was the bowl in which our flowerstructure (as I call in maybe unpolitly) was placed for kik and my wedding.... but thats was and is a different story about which you can read more on an other weblog (and if not mistaken one way or the other also linked to this one, hehe).

The only picture taken of me, but then it was allready close to 5 am in the morning during the Cids birthday afterparty in the Isaan karaoke Bar... we all got a little bit carried away... and well, once in a while I can enjoy looking funny, haha

Kik and friend perform a traditional Isaan dance for Cids birthday!

Two days before J&B organised and celebrated Carnaval we celebrated the birthday of our Cid, the Captain, as they sometimes call the person who runs a bar on behalf of its owners in their absence, or presence. Cid is also to previous owner of J&B Bar. And more importantly for us, he's Kik's very dear friend! Now, how old did he become, you ask.... well, I am free to say he turned 29 years old!
On the pic (right/above) you see me offering my congratulations and well wishes by putting a white piece of rope around his wrist, which is a very traditional THai way of congratulating a person and wishing him well in and for his futur!
On his request Kik organised a traditional Thai birthday party and to be more precize, a traditional Isaan party, from the North East of Thailand.
Ofocurse for everyone comming to the bar there was free food, and later in the evening we had two special little perormances of traditional Thai songs and dances...... and ofcourse, partly performed by Kik.
Around midnight the birthdaycake ceremony took place. I had bought a big chocolate cake from the Coffee Corner here in Paradise Complex, and I must say, it tasted pretty good...... gues in futur it will be their chocolate cakes we will purchase if we want to, because sofar that tasted far way the best ;-)

Ofocurse we had announced to our customers that we would celebrate a traditional Isaan birthday party, and that the music played would all be in that style and in the honor of Cid..... some customers though are not used to that style of music so aftera pretty long time they came asking if a more western tune could be played.......... in the ned we gave in ofcourse (customers are customers) and we played a few pieces of music the average farang allways knows how to appreciate.

All in all, allmost none of the customers who stopped by our bar or came to celebrate, left before we finished the party, so all in all it was, also for them, a very pleasant and happy party!

It was after 2 am when we finally closed the bar after having had a succesfull celebration of Cids birthday.......and ofcourse, totally in his style it was followed up elsewhere in Patong with Isaan Karaoke in his favorite Isaan karaoke bar.

Cid: Happy Birthday and a long and above all a happy, rewarding and prosperous life, you deserve it!!

2d Party, Carnaval, also a big succes.....

Left: BUsy preparing for the Carnavalparty, M busy with decorations and lamps, our Dutch friend/farang helping him, and DJ It (plays her discs on Bangla Road and in Boat Bar), who took care of parts of the music of that night watching on.... and 4 hours to go till kick off time ;-)

Mondag the 23d of February J&B Bar, this time together with More bar, organised a 2d 'night party' in Paradise Complex with again a wonderfull little show by Kik and his friends, ergo Kiks friends from Simon Cabaret. And also Leo, the Italian presented two acts again.
That the Thai find it hard to understand the meaning of carnaval and the style of music used during carnaval, was just a minor disttraction. One can not expect that they know all about our weird carnaval habits overnight.
In the end, as it turned out, I was the only one who actually dresed up weird/funny.. none of the Thai did, and none of the tourists who came... which made mee feel quite out of place but same time most of the 'farang' from Europe understood and appreciated my effort. The Thai thought it funny. My husband Kik though forbid me to go all the way on punishment of immidiate divorce, haha, and we negotiated the outfit which I wore in the end the whole evening.
Well, happy to say... sofar nobody send me a snap shot of me in that weird outfit, LOL, but then I think not even a digital camera would be able to deal with that, haha

BUT all in all this 2d party was also a succes, though still a lot to learn, to make more smooth and eficient, we allready made very decent progress compared with the Orange party. Ofocurse the amount of visitors was much less, so at first I was gloomy about the whole thing, but then reports came back in (sounds like a military operation, huh? haha) that the main gay street was relativly doing as well as during the Orange party, ergo, we did a damn good job.
Still, the music was better, the acts were better, the location of the acts improved and the set up of the party as whole improved significantly..... But I wouldn't be a typical Dutch guy if I wouldn't admit, or say, that there's still lots of room for improvement.

Preparation of a party is important, but thats one element with which the Thai seem to have a real big problem... everything sems to have to be organised at the last moment, which for a farang like me, is a real ordeal..... BUT a more then wonderfull learning experience again and above all I was happy to see that most customers enjoyed themselfs enormously.

So, I thank all our customers for not only truly enjoying our 2d party, but also being good sports for those moments that things didn't go as they should have been going.

Al in al it was a true suces again and I let the pics speak for themselfs ;-)

If any of you have any comments, or pics (even better) please share them with us!!