long live the king!

I don't think I've mentioned anything about the King of Thailand, yet. His name is Bhumibol Adulyadej (and yes, I just had to look his name up). Read up on him on wiki, if you want. Anyway, he's pretty much THE MAN in Thailand. I don't think I've ever seen so many pictures of one person anywhere else. They have these huge, 20' tall pictures of him on the streets, all over the place. Like this one in Ao Nang.We went to a couple of movies in Bangkok and before each movie started, they play a video on the King's life, with what must be their national anthem and everyone stands up. I thought that was kind of weird, but he's the king, he can do whatever he wants!

Like, have a national holiday on his birthday. It was December 5th and we arrived back in Bangkok on this day. I'm so glad we made it back this night so we could watch some performances by these little kids on Khao San Rd. They were pretty cute (and notice the huge photo of the King in the background). It was some international school, where they teach the kids different cultures and languages, so they did a bunch of songs/dances in different languages. The videos aren't that great, so I will just put a couple on here.

After we watched these kids for a while, we went to the main road, near the democracy monument. There were so many people everywhere. It was fun just watching all the crazy traffic and people running all over the place. Watch this video, it took longer for the light to change than I thought it would, but look at how all the scooters crawl up to the front of the line and then just take off once the light changes, it doesn't matter if there are people still crossing the road or other cars in the intersection. And yes, 3 to 4 people can easily fit on a scooter. We got pretty good at crossing the streets with all of the crazy traffic.

Everyone was waiting for the huge fireworks display, which was so good. I've never been so close to fireworks like this before. When it first started, there were some going off at both ends of the road and then the grand finale was right over our heads. That part was actually kind of scary because things started falling on our heads! And it was so loud, there were kids crying because it was so loud and people running for cover because all the parts of the fireworks that were blowing up above our heads were falling on us, like I said a little scary. I had some cardboard fall on me and some ashes get in my eyes, but we were ok. Again, not that great of a video because I had things falling on me and getting in my eyes.

After the fireworks display, we found a huge concert going on. It was some Thai performers and they had some fancy dancers. It was fun watching them. Everyone got really excited for this song. Thanks King for having a birthday party. It was a super fun night.