Bangkok:  There is absolutely no excuse to not living it up or soaking up the spirit of celebration to usher the new year while living in one of the best cities in Asia when it comes to New Year’s Eve celebration.

Lively vibes, effervescent chaos and hedonistic living can be contagious.The malls are alive with music, festive decorations and bargains all around to lure people from all corners of the Bangkok and its vicinity to encourage them to contribute to the economy. The restaurants are bursting at the seams with eager diners throughout the day, that one has to make an advance reservation to secure a place at all. And, the streets in downtown Bangkok oozes profound excitement with much urgency as vehicles and pedestrians on foot make their way to shopping streets to soak up the camaraderie.

From  fancy rooftop dinners, to the night markets as well as watching firework displays right in the heart of Bangkok or near the river and, the option to dance the night away , there are plenty of things to do on New Year’s Eve in Bangkok. No one would actually be coming home before 3 a.m on new year’s eve; that’s not just done. And it would be one of the best night anyone could ever had.

Only, we did none of that. All those happened in my previous life. That was life B.C (before children).

Instead, we stayed in after sending my parents off to the airport. And, after tucking in kids to bed way past their usual bedtime, we cleaned up, did some laundry, couched out in front of the TV, waited for midnight and then ushered the new year with Silver Bullet’s traditional olliebollen while we watched the remnants of the firework displays from our balcony which sort of looked like this:

 

Source: Twitter

The kids pretty much slept through all the thunderous fireworks that went on for a good half-hour, with no signs of being disturbed by the loud explosions nor by the din our neighbours were making. 

We have had several similar new year’s eve since: quiet, sedated, low-key and well…boring. Even the Ollieballen were sugarless (we ran out of icing sugar!) But, considering that we barely even made it to midnight in our earlier years after children, we made a little improvement by staying up till almost 2 a.m. this time.All 2 hours more.  Cool, huh! Our most exciting new year’s eve by far! It was a a big deal.

OK. OK. So we didn’t quite live it up, and we were far from soaking up the celebratory camaraderie that went on in downtown Bangkok along with 20 other million people on the streets.  That said, I personally found the couch to be more compelling and being with my husband comforting. We are only missing a few good friends, and we’ll just have to wait for a few more years to party with the kids.

Our new year’s eve may be bland and our ollieballen, sugarless yet, in a weird, perhaps even lazy kind of way to go all out, we kind of prefer our new year’s eve that way. Sometimes, a little bland is good.  There are now 364 days to sweeten-up the rest of the year.

Here’s some Olliebollen on us. Wishing you the sweetest rest of the year and don’t forget to sprinkle some of those sweetness as you please. 🙂