Thanksgiving in Chiang Mai

Well, we've had two pretty major US Holiday's since we've been here. One that I completely forgot about until the end of the day (Halloween so it didn't really matter anyway) and the other that felt pretty strange. It surely didn't feel like Thanksgiving, but we tried to "pretend" all day that it was a special day and I think the kids were able to get into it. Normally we'd be doing crafts and all sorts of fun stuff leading up to it but it just didn't happen this year. Hopefully next year will be a little more "normal" and we can actually plan.

Since no one has off of work on Thanksgiving (the American-based International schools do give a half/day) a lot of people wait to actually celebrate the Saturday after. We were going to have a Thanksgiving party with some other SIL folk on Saturday so Thursday we were just on our own. In the morning we hung out in our apartment. The strangest/saddest part was that there was no football on TV...it's just not Thanksgiving without football! I think next year I'll have Damien just put some old football games while I cook...just to have the noise in the background. :)

There is a restaurant here that is VERY popular with the ex-pat community. It's called Dukes and we heard about it the first day we were here. It was started by an American so the food is really good (meaning it's almost as good as a restaurant in the US) It's pretty expensive (meaning it's almost as expensive as Applebee's). We went there once during CLI to get hamburgers for 99Baht ($3.50). Anyway, Dukes is one of the few restaurants in town that serves a "real" Thanksgiving meal - or so we heard.



So we decided to give it a try. It was about $15/plate for us and the kids shared a child's plate for $10. By far the most expensive meal we've had here. I feel like I write a lot about how much things cost here, but it's such a normal part of buying everything around here - trying to figure out how much it "really" costs. I'm sure eventually I won't convert everything in my head to US$$$ and will just go off of the Baht amount to know if it's a good/bad price.


We were very pleased by it. It started with rolls (which were really good) and pumpkin soup - also yummy. The Caesar Salad was so-so but salads are not easy to find here so it was just nice to have.

Then came the main course. I was a little worried because Thai portions are usually very small compared to US (not necessarily a bad thing) but on Thanksgiving one of the best parts is stuffing yourself! I had nothing to worry about because it was TONS of food. We had Turkey -another thing that is VERY hard to come by. I haven't seen turkey anywhere. Ham is the only lunch meant you can get. But the turkey was yummy and cooked well. There was stuffing/dressing (a little different than what we've always had but good), green bean casserole (which was really really good), mashed potatoes (which Micaiah had like 5 helpings of), and cranberry sauce. There was also something they called "sweet potato casserole" but it was pretty much blue and white potatoes that were sweetened with sugar or something. It tasted fine but it was sad not to have "real" sweet potato casserole. Maybe on Saturday someone will make it? Or maybe you can't get sweet potato's here...I've never really looked. For dessert there was pumpkin and apple pie...the pumpkin was awesome! Unfortunately, Micaiah thought so too and ate all of mine. :-)


So overall, it was a really nice dinner!

After dinner we went to order some pies for Saturday. Then we went to the store so I could buy some Christmas cards. One of the bigger grocery stores here is a chain from France called Carrefour. You can definitely get the most imported stuff there...although we don't get much because it's soooo expensive. But I was surprised to find a small section of Christmas stuff. I'm pretty sure most Thais don't celebrate Christmas...it must be for the sizable "Western" population. They have a very small selection of Christmas cards...I think they are all pretty funny and I know people will get a kick out of them. They have some artificial Christmas trees and when we saw them for the first time a few weeks ago the boys just fell in love with this small, gold tree. It is soooo tacky, but they just loved it. Every time we've talked about a tree they reminded us of this gold tree. So we decided to buy it for them today to put in their bedroom. It's about the equivalent of $5 and with some lights for $1, and ornaments totaling $2 and a little star that was as expensive as the tree. We have a nice little Christmas tree which the kids just LOVE. Sora is just bursting with excitement...she has no idea why, but she knows the boys are excited which is enough excuse for her.

Trying to figure out how to get the box open!

Their favorite part is putting on the star. They just couldn't wait to do it!

Admiring the finished product!

They've gone to sleep every night with the lights on.