Sunday night’s activity was a big production and show, billed as, “The Best Show in Thailand.” Think a Myrtle Beach or Branson production with an Asian twist. They’ve got the production down, and it’s incredibly impressive.
First, you catch a ride on their shuttle. In our case, the driver came to get us in the hotel lobby and we joined the only other passenger, a nice guy named Ferdinand who was staying in the hotel across the street, for the 30 minute ride.
Ferdinand was a delight and became our dinner companion. From Vienna, it was his first visit to Thailand as well. Fortunately, he spoke very good English and we were able to communicate about a wide range of things, from politics (he likes Obama, along with many other people in Europe), the terrible earthquake in Haiti and a wide variety of other world issues.
Although we didn’t ask, our guess is that he was a little older than us. He owns a car repair and sales service in Vienna.
Once you get to the showplace, it feels very much like one of the tourist places worldwide. After you get your ticket, as you come in they pin an orchid to you (regardless of gender), and take your picture with a pretty lady in a purple dress. You go into the park area and are invited to look around a bit at the different exhibits.
For those of you who’ve been to the Indian Village either at Cherokee, NC or Anadarko, OK you’ll know the drill immediately. People in traditional costumes are set up to show different aspects of Thai culture. There are different traditional housing styles, stuff about silk weaving, puppets, elephants, and a group doing live music. It takes about 30 minutes to walk through and is pretty interesting for the uninitiated.
Then you go into the buffet hall and step up to the trough. Golden Corral, but Thai style. There's a little something for most everyone there.
As we’ve said before, never, ever, EVER eat the little red things, no matter how pretty they are. This was food for the masses, though, and wasn’t intended to scald your innards and it was pretty good. The fact that the offered “buy 2, get one free” beer didn’t hurt anything, either!
After the dinner buffet, you went into the show. This is a big stage production that just puts on this particular show, so there’s some pretty spectacular special effects. It has a river running across the front of the stage. People swing down like angels from heaven. There are live animals in the production, including the two elephants we saw out front who make an appearance both THROUGH THE AUDIENCE and on the big stage for the finale.
The problem, of course, is that although it’s multi-lingual, there weren’t any subtitles in English for most of it. There were periodic announcements and flashes on a screen during the 80 minute production, but it was a lot like watching a Passion Play and the presentation in the Hall of the Presidents in Disney World having never seen either before and not speaking the language. If you’ve grown up with it, you know the story and don’t need a lot of direction. If you haven't, you don't get a lot of content from the story although you can still enjoy the presentation.
If it’s entirely new, though, a bit of explanation would be helpful. You can appreciate a lot of the beauty of the pictures and performance, but comprehension of the story line is a bit thin.
One memorable scene seemed to show the depths and torments of Hell, with demons going after the souls that were its current inhabitants.
That, or it was a public service announcement against eating those little red things. We were never quite sure which.
A quick ride back to the hotel and we called it a night since Monday was again a day with a tour guide and a full schedule.
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