I think it was actually the first professional musical I ever saw (Mom, feel free to weigh in). I still remember going with my high school drama class to see a preview in New York before it opened.
As Vivian and I were sitting and listening to the opening announcements (please silence your cell phones, no photography), they mentioned that this was the 20 year anniversary of the Broadway version of Beauty and the Beast. Doing the math in my head, I realized that, yeah, that high school trip was twenty years ago. I could never have imagined then that twenty years later I would be sitting with my six year old daughter watching the same musical in Bangkok, Thailand.
As with any experience we've had in Thailand, there were some quirks to it. It began with getting to the theater which is, of course, in a mall. Everything in Bangkok is in these giant mall complexes, and, on the weekends, that is where Thais go to hang out. This makes the parking ridiculous. I've written in other blogs about trying to go to our local mall on a weekend afternoon (major traffic jam in the parking lot, Jeff dropped me off) and about getting to Siam Paragon early enough to get a parking spot, only to find myself double parked in when I was ready to leave. When Thais double park you in, they kindly leave their car in neutral so that you can push it out of the way. Unfortunately, they'll do a whole row that way, so you really have to start pushing at the back of the row. I don't like to push cars in the best of circumstances, but I definitely didn't want to do it dressed up and keeping an eye on Vivian. Final decision, call our favorite taxi guy. He usually takes Jeff to the airport for trips. He's honest and uses the meter, which is rare, and so far he's shown up every time.
Of course I still had to triple confirm with him to make sure he showed up at the right house at the right time, and then I pulled up Google maps while we were driving. With typical Thai logic, there are two malls fairly close to each other that have almost exactly the same name. I had a bad feeling that he might try to go to the wrong one. Sure enough, he turned right when he should have turned left. I asked him to pull over and showed him the map. He did an, "Ahhhh," like he finally understood why I had said the theater name ten times, instead of the mall name. The mall is called Esplanade, but when he saw it written out in Thai, suddenly it all made sense to him, and he said, "Empanad!" Apparently, this is like how Central is actually Centon, and Thais have no idea what you're talking about if you say you're going to Central Mall. On the flip side, we say bubble tea instead of boba tea, so the moral of the story is always triple check, because mispronunciation leads to miscommunication.
In the end, I was really glad we got the taxi though. The parking lot was such a mess that the traffic was backed into the main street. It was no problem for us though, because we just hopped out right in front. That gave me and Viv time to explore the mall a little, look around the theater, and find our seats, no rush, no stress.
At first Vivian was worried the play would be scary, because there are parts of the movie she finds scary, but she quickly got into the performance and was watching intently, no fear. It was almost as fun to watch her as it was to watch the play. During intermission we had some interesting conversations about things like why the orchestra was in a pit and what was different between the movie and the play. Vivian said she really liked the Beast's song which ends the first act.
By the end of the play, I could tell she was getting tired. She moved slowly on the way out of the theater. Luckily, getting home was easy. I just called our taxi buddy and he came around to the front to meet us. I had agreed to pay him an extra $10 to wait for us for three hours. While it may seem a bit crazy to hire a taxi to take you to a play, wait for you for three hours, and then take you home, it was the best solution I could come up with to avoid the pitfalls of going to the mall on the weekend in a country where taxi drivers you wave down on the street will typically either try to cheat you or just refuse to take you where you want to go. It ended up working out perfectly, and we made a memory that I will treasure, and I hope she does too.
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