Long Gun Posted February 16, 2002 Report Share Posted February 16, 2002 Well these Thai folks are still full of surprises, aren’t they, as even a cursory daily glance in the daily papers will confirm. Last night was family outing night and a perfect example of both extremes of organisation Thai-style. We went to see ‘River of Kings III – the Great Conquerors’ and opted for the ‘dinner & show’ option – B800 per head including soft drinks. Basically the idea is that you board one of the floating restaurant boats from the Riverside Hotel complex, have your meal, go upstairs where they have erected a grandstand/bleachers contraption seating over 1000 people, sail up the river to the Ratchaworadit Pier (just beside the Grand Palace which provides the backdrop for the show) watch the show and sail back with more food and drinks. So 1000 or so people file onto the boat where I expected lots of long tables laid out with food but instead you get a few long tables, a few more high round tables with a couple of stools each, and a buffet (!) where the food is all on a few small tables in the middle – mainly finger food type stuff, plus one guy trying to serve up noodle soup and a woman making somtam (in fairness there was probably another one at the other end. So a very entertaining melee ensues with all these Thais in their gladrags pushing and elbowing their way in and trying to eat and balance plates and drinks on anything that wasn’t moving. Of course we are a little more organized and send the lids to occupy as much table space as possible, get someone on the inside who piles plates high with drumsticks, fishcakes, wonton, whatever and passes them out to the runners to carry to the tables. In the long run it doesn’t matter much as everybody gets fed, plenty of food to go round and there is just as much waiting on the journey back. Beer costs extra but is ridiculously cheap given that we are a captive audience, B50 for Carlsberg, B40 for Chang. Once the boat is moving we take our (reserved, numbered) seats outside and enjoy the sights of the river and Bangkok at night which is worth a few baht in itself. When we get to the theatre area, there is a fixed, lower grandstand and our boat is manoeuvred behind that, alongside another similar boat, so there are probably 4000 or so people watching. If you do go, I think I would advise avoiding the front rows of the boats (Row A is at the front) as they seemed to be struggling to see over the back of the fixed stand. They have translation devices in English, French, Japanese, German and Mandarin (I think) but it seemed that you had to go to the front for those, so swings and roundabouts. The show itself was quite stunning, with, at a guess, a cast of around 1000. At first I thought it was the same dancers changing costumes but they all came out together at the end. The set is huge and there are all sorts of activities taking place at any time, the sound was great, some fascinating music, the usual Thai pyrotechnics, superb colourful water fountains including 3 giant ‘screens, made up of fountains with images projected onto them. It features various stages of Thailand’s history, with the obligatory big battles (complete with elephants) but also focuses on recent stages in its development, shows the different ethnic groups who cohabit and has a great section showing the costumes and dances of the four main regions. Watching a hundred or so dancers doing those graceful, sexy Issan dances in tandem had me wondering what time I could get to Midnight by. So, if you’re looking for somewhere to take the family, or that special ‘different’ holiday companion, this is definitely worthy of consideration. There are 2 shows a night, we boarded the boat around 6.15 and were back about 3 hours later so the next one must be around 9.30. The Bangkok Post says the shows are at 7.00 pm and 9.15 pm and if that is true the people who were waiting for our boat would have missed most of it! B400 and B600 for the show alone (02 3748000 or 02 6235500 x1120-2 for reservations) or B800 for the full package (02 8831588-94) Better hurry though as I think it finishes on Monday. LG Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Posted February 17, 2002 Report Share Posted February 17, 2002 The buffet cluster-f*ck sounds pretty horrible, but everything else sounds really neat. Wish I were to be in LOS before it closes. I'd like to check it out. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Long Gun Posted February 18, 2002 Author Report Share Posted February 18, 2002 Just in case anybody was interested, I think it is actually running until the end of this month but this weekend was the only time that the Princess would be played by a member of the Royal Family. LG Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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