December is a month for memorial of Tsunami and time for celebration. Most of companies often held the New Year Party within this month. Some companies may have big budget for celebration but some do not have that much budget to spend for their staffs. Everything depends on companies’ profits.
Each year, New Year party will be different styles, which depend on the organizer of the party. For this year, the company where I am working had set the theme for the New Year party as “Thai Country Style: Sense the ground and grass”. People may wonder what Thai Country Style is. The definition of Thai Country Style is wearing colorful dress and floral printed dress. The best example for Thai Country Style Dress is watching “Yham” movie. For male dress should be colorful floral printed tiny shirt with jeans or Thai fishery pants and the most important accessory, that is Thai loincloth. While female dress is colorful dress, top and pants/skirt should be in contrastive color. Wearing contrasting color and mismatch dress seem to be one of principle rule of Thai Country dressing.
Not only the dress that create the Thai Country Environment but also the surrounding. The organizer had set the rental area to be a kind of mini Fun Fair; in Thai we call “Ngan Wat”. It may assume that the name of “Ngan Wat” is related to the place where the fun fair takes place is temple and decorated with various color of neon fluorescent lamps. At “Ngan Wat”, people can find many booths for playing game and selling food and drinks. For example, “shooting booth” for shooting cans or dolls, when your shoot and hit the target you will get the award (doll); “Sao Noi Tok Nam” is the booth provide a tank and girls sit on the wooden beam, girls will sit next to the target for shooting a ball, when the ball hit the target, a girl will fall from the beam and get wet; ballroom for dancing with female dancer; and Ferris Wheel, which seems to be a symbol of “Ngan Wat”.
It is difficult to find “Ngan Wat” in Bangkok or in the big cities. Assumed that people who live in the big cities prefer to go to the shopping mall rather than going to “Ngan Wat”.
As I ever visited the Hamburg Fun Fair last year, I think “Ngan Wat” and Fun Fair of Farang tend to be similarity only different people and location. At Hamburg, there were candy shops, French fries shop (Denmark flavor), Ghost House, Ferris Wheel and so on. Almost every food shops provide draft beer because German is a land of beer. While “Ngan Wat”, people can find “Ya Dong” or homemade alcohol/liquid with herbs contain in vessel/jar.
However, I found the fascinating of Hamburg Fun Fair, which is the theme of the fair, it creates each theme for each year. Last year theme was “Love’ and it provides some bulletin boards for people to post their personal advertisements such as looking for male/female and etc. Also you can find your (soul) mates at the ballroom where the meeting place is. It sounds fun for single people to have a blind date at the fun fair.
Let’s get back to our Fun Fair, our department were bound to wear the colorful dress in team in order to present our harmony. Our marketing staff and myself went to find the mismatching dress at Pratunaam (Water Gate), where provides the cheapest clothes especially for wholesales (minimum 3 pieces). We got what we desired, floral printed shirts for male staffs and colorful sleeveless blouses with floral printed pants for female staffs. It costs around 150 baht for each person with the Thai Country Look! It rewinds the time back to 70’s!
Party started with music, appetizers, food & drinks and performance of in-house staff and hiring outsource. I have to salute for in-house staff performance because they are not the professional but they can express their hidden talents when they perform on the stage. Such a brave staffs!
Have you ever seen cabaret show? In Thailand, there is one significant cabaret show that different from normal cabaret show that look elegant and magnificent, while “Pak Bung Cabaret Show” collect all weird shemales and form as a funny cabaret. This cabaret focuses on entertaining the audience with the ugly/disgusting faces and funny look. They can make us laugh our ass out!
Finally, the highlight of the New Year party seems to be lucky draws for the lucky staffs with several of award such as money (5,000 -60,000 baht), TV, digital camera, microwave, fan, and golden necklace. Feel glad with the lucky man who gets the biggest prize, which is 60,000 baht.
The party ended with marathon dancing. I have never stayed until the party ended. My husband came to the party and had some drinks and then we went back home.
