When trying to find out where we could take the children for New Years Eve my friend Ally told me about a big Firework Display planned at the 700 year Stadium close to City Hall.
It sounded like the perfect option so we had an early dinner and left Stratton House at around 5pm to ensure our arrival for the supposed 6.30pm start.
We could have done with leaving 15 minutes earlier with traffic being at a crawl close to City Hall and then finding a parking spot taking almost as long as it took to drive there.
Parked within the grounds of City Hall, close to the Cold Season Festival; which is running until the 9th; we just caught the start of the Fireworks as we walked up to cross the main road. We found a spot inside the grounds around the Stadium where we had a fairly clear view of what was quite a spectacular dislplay.
For a while it looked like it may be an anti-climax when the fireworks finished after about 15 minutes. The children were most dissapointed. I tried to explain that this was a competition and there was probably waiting time while the next team set up. With patience not always being a strong point the childrens mood ended up convincing me that maybe we had just missed it and we headed back towards the parking lot.
Just as we re-crossed the main road….BOOM!!!…. and the dark skies were once again filled with a dazzling array of pyrotechnics.
In the end the kids all agreed that it was well worth the trip.
And so we move into a New Year at Stratton House, now caring for 8 young Thai children.
On New Years Eve we took the children to the the annual Cold Season fair, held at City Hall, Chiang Mai. Very popular with the local population, it is a huge event, with many stalls, stages and fair ground rides. We arrived at around 6.30pm just after dark and the children were immediately excited to see the lights of the fair ground rides. There is so much to see at this festival that you could walk round for hours. Later in the evening there would be several different live acts performing on the various stages.
As is typical at such events there were hundreds of food, clothing, and toy stalls as well as many other displays fo things like mobile phone services, car showrooms, etc.
The fair ground rides were basic but very good value and our children spent time on a Merry-go-round, the Bouncy Castle, a Ghost House and the ‘Big’ Wheel.
The two older boys, Dtu and Tai tried their hands at Balloon bursting with darts and Dtu managed to win a cuddly bear.
We strolled around the various stalls and bought some colouring books for use back home and the children appeared to have a really good time.
The most popular event turned out to be a Snake show that we came across by chance.
Jack heard the announcer and pulled us to an area behind the stalls, where the show was just starting.
I’m not sure about the ethics of the show, involving a boy who looked to be about 12 baiting a viper of some sort to show its very painful looking fangs.
Several other snakes were featured including a Cobra which an older boy appeared to hypnotise inbetween out right baiting.
The older leader of the show, as well as talking all the way through, later performed some simple magic tricks which fascinated and amused the children no end.
By the time we got home at just after 10 the children were all too tired to wait for midnight so we had a quiet transition into 2010.
For more photos please visit our photobucket album here.
