Ben ik van Engels bloed...

I discovered something about myself in the last couple of weeks... I’m more of a patriot than I assumed.

It all started some time ago when my colleagues and I went outside to admire one of the numerous parades that took place on the Rangsit campus. Especially to encourage our students and show our faces. Within no time Jacintha (my colleague from CHN) and I got a flag around our necks and were supposed to walk along in the parade. The worst thing was that it was a British and an Australian flag. We felt like we were betraying our motherland. That’s why we decided to sing our national anthem: ‘Het Wilhelmus’ in the middle of the sports field with the foreign flags around us.

5th of December Sinterklaas? No way, the 80th birthday of the King! Thailand is known for its King madness, so imagine what it was like on his 80th birthday. I’ve never seen soooo much yellow! In the evening we waited in front of the Grand Palace for the King to arrive. We waited along with 1000s of Thai, in the burning sun, for a very long time. There were some rumours going around that we had to sit down since your head has to be lower than the King’s head. But it’s quite difficult to sit down if you already hardly have space to stand. That resulted in a huge chaos. In the end we managed to sit but nothing happened, no King, no nothing. Therefore we decided to stand up again. That again resulted in angry Thai, all those huge Farang (foreigners) blocking their sight made the Thai a lot less friendly. They tried to get us out of the way with elbows and poking with flags etc.
Before we knew, in a flash, in a huge car, there he was, exactly was…gone already.
After this tiring but interesting experience we relaxed in the VIP cinema, luxurious chairs, blankets, pillows, massage chairs etc.

We are integrated but not that integrated we don’t let our Sinterklaas be taken away from us. (Do you feel the patriotism shining through again…?) Because of the birthday of the King we moved it to the 4th of December. A great evening with creative poems, nice gifts and even pepernoten.

And now time for the Grand Finale the final prove to show that I’m a true patriot and a good representative of our small country below sea level in all the countries that I visit. Yesterday I was transformed into a true Volendam lady. In our beautiful outfits we have enjoyed Van Dobben kroketten, haring, hutspot met gehaktbal, poffertjes, stroopwafels, real Dutchh cheese, kaussoufle etc, etc.
For 2/3 weeks a square in front of a huge shopping mall in Bangkok downtown has been transformed into a Dutch village. With wooden shoe makers, cheese weighing and lots of Dutch delights. We were asked by the Dutch embassy to walk around in traditional Dutch costumes.