Ok, so it's been a few days. But I've busy with the crazy dancing fools and their marry adventures.
On Saturday my host overheard on the morning "news" (little trucks with loudspeakers on them that drive around and broadcast all sorts of colourful tidbits about sales at the local market, new movie reviews and other community announcements) that Yasothon was having a dance competition to celebrate national youth day.
So of course, we just had to hijack the whole thing...and our local connection called the mayor and we weaseled our way in.
Now, as this was a national celebration, I sort of expected some Thai traditional dancing, and the first number didn't disappoint, but after that the whole thing degenerated into a bizarre Britney Spears Thai Techno bang bang monstrosity where 11 year old girls in cheerleader uniforms flashed us their panties. Oh, and some Thai boys that were dressed like Thai girls flashed us their panties too.
And so when the International dancing, peace loving, foreign people started their dances about equality of the races and calling for the elimination of poverty, poeple at first really didn't know what to think. Really, the whole place was silent until the very end. And then they loved us. (Or rather, they loved them, I didn't even get to work the music this time...)
And after we were done the mayor of Yasothon (decked out in a shimmering blue/green dinner jacket) invited us all over to perform at a party he was throwing for a bunch of his politician friends. So we all jumped into the back of a comandeered fire truck (ok, so it was just a pickup truck, but it was owned by the fire station AND it had flashing lights on the roof) and drove over to the mayors party and my dancing musical cohorts performed a great dance about the responsability of the wealthy of this world to make sure that the less fortunate then themselves are not forgotten.
But a lot of the audience was all pretty drunk by then, so who knows if any of it resonated...
But hey, we got free food out of it anyway. So everybody went home a winner.