Christmas Eve in Bangkok

Hey New Bangkok Photos!
In one corner of Santi Chai Prakan park near where I am staying, eight people on a makeshift stage (nine if you count the white guy listening) are playing traditional Chinese instruments and singing. It is sad, occasionally raucus, beautiful, rhythmic and reminiscent of howling cats, sitars and dulcimers. It is not Jingle Bells. In the opposite corner a Thai Capoera group is singing and clapping around two dancers/fighters who spar in flowing slow motion. Along the sidewalk an old white hippie teaches a "George-of-the-jungle" rhythm to a young Thai woman wearing a tie-dyed headscarf. Three stoned dread-lockers lie in the grass as a stunningly beautiful and tattood mother chases the toddler that just rebounded off of me like a diapered bumper car. The silver-blue and pink sunlight reflected from the Chao Phraya river has faded and the dim light remaining comes from flourescent tubes tied to sticks that are hammered into the grass. Some ambient light reflects off of the moldy and once-white castle like walls of Phra Sumen Fort and a small Buddhist shrine. Old men sit on benches watching the tuk-tuks speed by billowing massive amounts of blue smoke as bright ferries, lit up like Christmas trees, float by on the now black water. Above it all are the illuminated suspension cables of Phra Pinklao Bridge, asymetrically lighting up the sky like a giant broken harp...with...cars on it. I'm alone on Christmas Eve and I don't care. I kind of hate to say it, but I've just fallen in love with Bangkok.