Ripe Fruit & Fake Flowers

Thai parties have been an essential part of our time in Chaiyaphum. Not only do they have them for just about anything, but we are invited to them on a regular basis (meaning maybe between 1-4 a week). It doesn't matter what kind of party your invited to there will always be food, alcohol and karaoke.
Being "farang" (foreigners) its is a requirement to sing before you can leave the party, trust me there is no way of getting out of it. We have been to "monk" parties, "welcome" parties, retirement parties, change of school parties,  funeral parties, dinner parties and more.

One of the the common Thai traditions at these welcome/ going away / retirement / change of school parties are gifts. The typical gift upon leaving or entering a new school along with the party is fake flowers. These flowers come in all colors and arrangements, they can range from a real bouquet you would buy at the grocery store to fake flowers in a pot. There is a "traditional" way to give and receive these flowers. First the head person (director, boss, government official etc.) gives some speech and then hands the person the flowers, but before that person can take them they hold out their arms placing the flower arrangement between themselves and the head person until lots of pictures have been taken. Of course no one actually smiles in the pictures, only before and after the picture. 

The only other presents are framed pictures of the King and Queen, blankets, towels and pottery vase things. 

Another component of Thai parties is consuming alcohol. There are 3 types of alcohol that you will find; whiskey, Thai beer, or Spy Red. Spy Red is what Thai people consider real wine, but really it is just a wine cooler. If there is no alcohol at the party it usually means its on school grounds (its against the law to bring alcohol onto government school property). While most people would be okay with this there are always the "bad" kids (teachers) that sneak in alcohol, of course you can always assume that these are teachers from Bangampan School.

On a completely different note, but another tidbit of Thai culture is the consumption of un-ripe fruit. I'm not sure if Thai people don't understand the concept of ripe fruit or they just like to eat sour things... They always make a "this is sour" face and say "oooy priow" (oooy, sour) like they don't like what they are eating (Thais do something similar to this with spicy food too - when they are crying and saying how spicy the food is they just keep eating it!!). To help with this sour taste they always eat it with this sugar chili dip. I don't really get why they don't wait until the fruit is sweet instead of dipping every bite in sugar! Frequent un-ripe fruit that we eat on the regular is mango, guava, papaya.