The day after my birthday, we returned from Pakse on the 15:30 bus to Ubon. It arrived on schedule but sadly, the last bus to Trakan had already disappeared along Highway 2050. We turned to the new TaxiMeter service, but the taxi driver thought it was too far to drive to Thamuang. I greeted this astonishing piece of news with a mild remonstration, but, nobody was listening except a gang of Thai youth who may have agreed with me, or, more likely, found it amusing that a farang had dumped on, again.
We decided to stay with Pell, Khamma's daughter. She has a small room close to the university, where she stays during the week. After a quick phone call, Pell arrived and shuttled us back to her room. Within half an hour, Khamma's sister had telephoned, and hearing our plight, invited all three of us to a karaoke restaurant.
The Thai's love a good singsong and by the time we arrived, the party was in full swing. The restaurant has private dining rooms complete with a karaoke equipment and the facility to choose the tracks to sing-a-long to. This arrangement reduces inhibitions and embarrassment so that instead of standing up in a room full of strangers and making a complete fool of yourself, you do so with greater intimacy in front of your friends. It is that simple, and it gives the allusion that you have some control, whereas, in fact, in makes no difference to the end result, which remains an unpolished performance.
However, as the farang, the Thais perceive me as the novelty act. I feel a shockwave of pressure coming towards me from the twenty odd people in the room who vocally demand that I sing. I decided there was no escape, except because all the tunes were in Thai, I might be excused of assaulting the Thai language and music. The crowd, to some extent respected to my plea, but the techie (there is always one) in the group found a range of English songs and the pressure upon me intensified. I had no escape; I had to get on with the act.
I admit I am shy to performing in public. Even though I can blast out a few tunes on the harmonica, and bang out some beats and rhythms on the bodhran, I find it embarrassing to unleash my talent on people I do not know. There was no way out of my comfort zone - again - two days in a row.
I sang Song So Blue with my old mate Neil Diamond, the Green, Green Grass of Home with king of the music hall - Tom Jones and Oh Carol with Neil Sedaka. Most of the Thais said they enjoyed it, except about half of them who chose the moment to visit the toilet.
I actually quite enjoyed the experience. I only did what everybody else was doing with ease; I joined in the fun and had a laugh, with good food, good company and a good glass of Beer Leo.
It was amusing that the taxi driver's refusal to take us home resulted in a cracking night out, and me facing my fear of being outside the comfort zone. I had conquered another fear, but was somewhat deflated that they only wanted to hear three songs from me.
Next morning we squeezed into the bus with about 60 other people and returned to Thamuang, smiling and pleased with our week’s adventures.
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