Off To The Circus!

The Royal London Circus has been in town for a month performing, so Took and I went last night. First we stopped by Margaritavilla for a drink and chatted with Gene (who is back in town), Rick, and Robin. Then it was out to Zen, a new Japanese restaurant on the third (fourth) floor of Royal Garden Plaza, which was quite nice... although you really have to scour their menu to find an unfish thing to eat.

Then it was off to the circus!

Circus rule #1: Cotton candy in Thailand's heat and humidity has a shelf life of exactly 45 minutes. After that, it melts down to a block of pink sugar.

Circus rule #2: If you are going to call yourself the Royal London Circus, you have to have an Englishman in the show. What we saw was the Moscow Circus, under new management. Even the ringleader was Russian. (Even more odd, the taped voices that played in certain parts of the performance spoke english with American accents.) The horse trainer was Indian, and there were Chinese acrobats, but other than that, all the names were "Andre and Tatiana!", "The Sergitov Brothers!" and names like that.

Circus rule #3: Thai girls love big pink punchy balloons on long rubber bands more than life itself.

So Took got a punchy balloon, I got a bag of soon-to-be-something-other-than cotton candy (although Thailand goes with the British nomenclature, "candy floss" which I think is a crappy name compared to cotton candy). Then we took our front-row seats.

Yes... we were quite close. We were so close that the chalk from the trapeze artists was snowing down on us; so close we were could smell the horses; so close we coughed from the exhaust from the motorcycles.

So close, I wound up with the worst stiff neck from craning my neck up at all the aerial artists... damn. (Fortunately Took managed to rub it out pretty well during the intermission.)

Took had a wonderful time. She acted like she had never seen a trapeze act before... gasping and clapping right from the beginning.
The horses were kind of lame, but they managed to stand still long enough to take a photo with my even lamer camera phone.These Chinese acrobats were a lot of fun. They came out twice, the first time juggling straw hats, which was cool... and this was their second act. Took liked them a lot also. The grand finale was the Cage of Death™ motorcycle thingy. Seen it... yawn... 3 motorcycles inside a sphere going round and round... yup. Well: They did it with 5 motorcycles. I have to say, that was cool. Like I said, I was close enough, and I actually saw two of the riders helmets hit each other... but I suppose that they are used to that.

Anyway, I tried taking photos of the motorcycles in motion, but they are all just blurs, so I'm putting up this picture of them standing still.

Now, it's the next morning, and Took is in the kitchen telling Go all about the circus, so it was definitely worth the $11 tickets to go... even I had a great time. I'm going to have to take the big balloon away from her though, as she is running around the house bouncing it and laughing yelling "barskitbarl!"