Not the best pictures I've taken, but you've got to see these karaoke booths

It all started with karaoke. Not my forte but it’s insanely popular in Thailand. So much so that my students asked me to sing karaoke with them at a small karaoke “shop”, sober in the middle of the day, like they were asking me to play football.

The karaoke shop is little more than a small building with wooden walls dividing the space into several small booths equipped with TVs, computers, stools, large speakers and microphones. The booths seemed way too small, but it’s normal to see someone enjoying himself or herself singing alone. We, on the other hand, were packed into our strange wooden booth.

50 baht buys 10 songs. There were no English songs but I was expected to sing. For me it was more like a fast reading exercise, trying to pronounce the Thai syllables as they were highlighted across the bottom of the screen. As horrible as I was at it, it was great practice for reading and speaking Thai.

Big Ass, Bodyslam, Clash, Palmy, Potato, Pu. We hit all the favorites. Concentrating on the letters I missed most of the videos of handsome and beautiful, love-stricken Thais fomenting their feelings about unrequited love, break ups, being cheating on or any other moments that incited hysterical actions and crying forlornly, looking out into the pouring rain.

May, Tik, Ing and Iw were nice enough to not force the microphone on me too often and sang most of the songs themselves, cheering or groaning when the computer scored their performances. At the end of the 10 songs we left and Ing and Iw (twins from the birthday party) I was delighted that they had their fill and weren’t ready to go another 10 songs. I was however invited to Ing and Iw’s house for a home cooked meal.