Olay, olay olay olay, olay olay.0

I’m back and ready for action, and I hope you are too. What really put me out of commission for so long was the fact that I ran out of batteries for my camera- the charger for which I accidentally forgot in the States. So, I’ve been rationing my camera usage until I could get a replacement charger. Finally the day came that all of my three batteries died- and with it my blog (I find blog posts kind of boring without pictures). But alas, hallelujah, Nick’s Adventure Blog rises again with bountiful amounts of photographs and tales.

Alright, that’s enough, if you’re not over the fact that I’ve left you pining for my silky smooth literary voice, you need to be. I’m not staying up at until 1:00am writing this just because I despise the notion of sleep. No, I do this for you. So to kick it off, I’m going to be talking about some football, (Pun pun pun pun!(Yeah I like to think I’m a clever writer.(I actually noticed the pun AFTER I wrote it.))) or what some of you may refer to as soccer. After getting laughed at by my students the first two weeks for calling it soccer, I have since ceased to use the term.

Last week, I went to my first ever professional socc…uh…football match. It was Thailand’s National football team vs. the English Premier League’s Liverpool. Now if you’ve read any of my other posts, I believe there’s one that shows the view from my 14th story window, and from it you can distinctly see the stadium. In fact its located only 3 or so blocks away, so you better be able to see it. Anyway, a pretty large group of about 15 or so ajarns (teachers, last time I’ll remind you) trekked over to the stadium to watch the Wednesday night match. I will admit, my expectations were pretty high. For years I had watched cable television showing the craziness of football outside of the USA- riots, stampedes, police, stadium tiers collapsing etc. None of which I wanted anything to do with, but certainly built up the hype and the image of football mayhem in my mind.

Most of us were decked out in our yellow or blue, newly purchased, Thailand jerseys and we had purchased the last 26 tickets in the country for our section (the cheap section). We quickly found out that this neat trivia fact of ours meant little or nothing, as there was absolutely no one checking tickets at the gate. I didn’t know if I should have felt good or bad about this. You could bring in as much beer as you wanted (of which I didn’t because I thought they would confiscate it) or why the hell did I waste 600 baht (roughly $18 USD) on a ticket. Mai pen rai. Either way, while we though we would be few yellow jerseys which would blend in with a sea of many, it was quite the opposite. In fact, I would have never in my life imagined a whole country full of fair-weather fans. Almost all of the Thais, at least 95% were wearing red Liverpool jerseys, and if you don’t believe me look at the photos. While the Thai fans had nothing against their own country, it was still surprising for me to see. And while we all said “Shame on you” as we passed, they would just laugh and smile, happy to see a bunch of white people in Thailand jerseys.

We managed to mosey our way on down to the few other REAL Thailand fans right behind the goal- a few isn’t an exaggeration either- maybe a good 20 others in total. We made a small speck of mustard in a bowl of ketchup- and some friends sitting way up high told us we were the only mass of yellow in the whole stadium. With such a small minority brings a certain amount of pride and thus we went a full 90 cheering for the beloved Thais. Sadly, when Liverpool scored their first goal, we were easily drowned out by the cheers of tens of thousands of “Liverpool” fans that erupted throughout the stadium. Ahhh. but when the Thai team scored their goal in the second half….the whole stadium also erupted, but at least this time we were on the same side. However, when the home team scores, the home team fans get the coverage. National television coverage, nay, international television coverage to be more accurate (Aljazeera) and half of them aren’t even Thai. I and many of my fellow teachers have had students tell me in class that they saw me/us on TV, which is pretty cool I think. I’ve included the video highlight from the game so you can see us. I would say to look for me right behind the obnoxious white guy waving his shirt around in the air (Ed!), but in the excitement I may or may not have fallen on my ass in the row behind me because the seats I was standing on were shaking so badly from the hullabaloo. Aljazeera Game Highlights

Rain then ensued, as it often does in Thailand, and the last 20 minutes or so were played in the downpour. Thus there are only two photographs in the rain, as I had may camera stored away in my nifty new camera bag which has a built in rain cover. Sopping wet, the game ended in a 1-1 tie (which is practically a win for us and a loss for them) and the national team even came over to our section of loyal fans and Wai(ed) (bowed) to us, which is a pretty huge deal. And with the end of the match, we marched out of the stadium singing our cheers and walked straight into the bar for a celebratory drink.