There was a time when you had to wait for the annual Hua Hin jazz festival to see some good bands playing jazz. If you were into Thai rock, you could also dodge flying glass bottles at the annual Cha-am Reggae festival (where music can be heard sometimes when there is no gunshots, screams or ambulance sirens troubling the peaceful and “economy-boosting-good-for-the-city-image” event).
Now live music can be enjoyed weekly, in a friendly atmosphere of a music bar, with great musicians and a nice crowd of people (mostly Scandinavians) cheering, singing and dancing. The place is Baan Chang, in soi 9 North, that is the soi just next to the Methavalai hotel. Baan Chang is run by Nissa Nyberget, who is, as I just found out, a famous Norwegian entertainer (Wikipedia presents him as a songwriter and musician who also hosted radio and TV shows). Nissa is now doing what he seems to like best: organizing live jam sessions in his music bar, with a lot of musicians getting together and playing jazz and rock standards.
The Sunday night jam session kicks in at 8.00 pm, see you there on Sunday!
You can’t have missed it, as it brings much animation every night in Cha-am, yes the “Kin hoy, doo nok, tok meuk” (eat shellfish, watch birds, fish squid), aka Cha-am shellfish festival, is back. It started last Saturday (24th) and it will be going on until Sunday (Oct 2). There are many shops selling all kinds of things and a big foodcourt at the viewpoint with concerts on stage. For those who heard about the Reggae festival brawl, we would like to ensure you that there is nothing of that kind to worry about, as it is a totally different crowd. So hurry up, there are just a few days left!
Welcome to the latest edition of Language Corner, the easy to understand guide to speaking functional Thai, brought to you by Insight English Cha-Am and Onlychaam.com.
You have more than likely heard Thais ask the question ‘Sa-baai dee mai?’ – meaning ‘How are you?’ In this edition, we are going to look at alternative ways to ask this question and the various responses you can give.
How are you?
Question:
- Sa-baai dee mai? = How are you?
- Bpen yang-ngai baang? = How is it going?/ How have you been?/ How was it?
Answer:
- Sa-baai dee maak. = I’m very well.
- Sa-baai dee. = I’m fine.
- Gor dee. = Not bad.
- Ruai-ruai = So so.
- Mai koi sa-baai. = Not so good.
- Mai sa-baai. = Not well.
- Mai sa-baai maak. = Not well at all.
- Roo-suk yaae. = Terrible.
Practice the following dialogue between Parichat and David:
Parichat: Sa-wat-dee ka. Bpen yang-ngai baang ka? (How are you doing?)
David: Mai koi sa-baai krap. (I’m not so good.)
Parichat: Kun bpen a-rai ka? (What’s wrong?)
David: Pom bpuat-hua nit-noi krap. (I have a slight headache.)
Vocabulary:
Maak = Very
Koi = Quite
Roo-suk = Feel
Yaae = Terrible
Bpen a-rai = What’s wrong?
Bpuat = Pain
Hua = Head
Nit-noi = A little bit
Language Corner is brought to you by Insight English Language School.
What should have been a friendly reggae concert last Saturday quickly became a massive brawl between gangs of drunk teenagers. Just like last year several people died (nobody knows exactly how many), and a lot of people got injured. A member of our forum was there and he said “he lost count of the amount of people who were walking past with an array of different injuries.” The images on Thai TV news are quite shocking too.
It was the 3rd edition of this concert, let’s hope it was the last one!
The Reggae on the rock concert is back in Cha-am. It will take place on the northern part of the beach, on September 3. It’s already the third edition, so it’s becoming an annual event. 18 bands will perform for this huge concert. Expect Cha-am to be fully packed!
The annual “Kin hoy doo nok tok meuk” festival is also back in September, during 9 days, from September 24 to October 2. As the name says in Thai, it’s about eating shellfish, watching birds and fishing squid, and there will also be concerts and shows every night. It is held at Cha-am lookout (at the center of the beach).
Finally, the 10th annual Hua Hin Jazz Festival, which usually happens in June, will be held on August 26 and 27 (Friday and Saturday). The main stage will be on the beach, in front of the Sofitel (not far from the Hilton). For more info on lineup and schedule, check jazzfestivalhuahin.com.
We have just opened a French version of Onlychaam.com. It was quite a lot of work to translate all the pages, setup the forum and everything, but it was also a good opportunity to review all the pages in details and make sure we still give up-to-date information. The French version of Onlychaam can be found at fr.onlychaam.com
Nous sommes heureux de vous annoncer que le site Onlychaam existe désormais en français. Nous avons également mis en place un forum en français, où tous les francophones et francophiles sont les bienvenus. Retrouvez-nous sur fr.onlychaam.com
This event, which already took place in June 2010, is back again this year, kicking off June 24, until July 3. Khong Dee Meuang Cha-am could be translated as “The good things about Cha-am”, and it will be a big open air market, with food stalls, various shops, and also concerts every night. The program of the concerts is as follows:
June, Friday 24 : Biew the star
Saturday 25 : Sunshine
Sunday 26 : Aed 2 (no, not the real one)
Monday 27 : school kids performing songs
Tuesday 28 : Farsai the rainbow
Wednesday 29 : Vespa R-Siam
Thursday 30 : Yimyam Panna feat. Marijuana 2 (comic show)
July, Friday 1 : Benz and the Prik Thai band
Saturday 2 : San Naka
Sunday 3 : Cha-am ladies beauty contest
In our forum, we are drawing up a calendar of all annual events in Cha-am. You are welcome to join and add comments, questions or suggestions!
We are happy to announce that our forum has now reopened! We had to close the old one because of too much spam and too little activity, but the site has grown bigger and more famous since then, so we are confident that we will get the ball rolling. We will even offer something to the first 10 persons who register and post at least one message! We can’t tell you what it will be, but forum members will be kept informed. So, please feel free to join and ask your questions about Cha-am, or start a new discussion, or just come in and say hello! We’re looking forward to seeing you there.
These last few days we went through all the pages of this site and updated many of them. Cha-am is changing fast and we state on the homepage of this site that our goal is to provide free and up-to-date information. It means that we have a reputation to live up to! We also added a search engine, so if you’re looking for any information about a hotel, a restaurant or a particular place in Cha-am, just enter the name in the search box, hit Enter or click Search and your results will be displayed.
We hope you enjoy our website and find it useful. As usual your help is most welcome, so if you notice any mistakes please use the link at the bottom of each page to contact us.
In order to relieve the traffic jam especially on holidays and long week-ends, a new roundabout was built north of Cha-am main junction.
When coming from Bangkok, you can enter the roundabout on your left just when the road makes a bend to the right before arriving to the traffic lights. Follow the direction of the beach and you can then either turn left on the hospital road and reach the northern side of the beach, or turn right and reach the Family Mart junction (but on busy days, the police will usually prevent you from turning right).
When going back to Bangkok, you now have the option to take the round about and follow the small frontage road until you make a U-turn under the elevated road that goes over the railway. This frontage road has thus become a two-way road, but on busy days they will probably make it one-way.
Anyway, it’s nice to see that Cha-am municipality is doing something to relieve the traffic jam, which is already not too bad, to be honest. I mean even on holidays, you get stuck not much longer than any usual day in Hua Hin!
