Going to the movies!

I rarely go to the movies, even at home, but I went out to dinner last night with my friend Anna and we decided to check out the cinema.  The last movie I saw was on the plane to Singapore, Twilight!

Our Indian waiter was helpful in recommending theaters and we ended up going to the airport mall, which is large and Western and has a movie theater inside.  They were only showing two movies in English so we went for Man of Steel.

We had an hour to wait before the movie started and the shops in the mall had all closed but fortunately the theater was very comfortable.  There were plenty of places to sit in the lobby and several arm chairs along the hallway to the theaters.  

 The concession stand offered the obligatory popcorn and soda but the sizes were much smaller.  We each got extra large popcorns which were about half the size of a small at home!

Movies aren't too expensive here, by American standards at least; 170 baht for the ticket, and 140 for the popcorn and water (the snacks always get you!)

There weren't many people in the theater, only about 20, but that may have been because it was a 10pm showing.  There was one farang couple but pretty much everyone else was Thai.  (The only reason I noticed them in the front of the theater is because they seemed as bewildered as us when the Royal Anthem started playing.) They showed a ton of advertisements before the movie, not just movie trailers but ads for things like toothpaste and breath freshener.  And then, after the advertisements, everyone stood up and a song came on accompanied by a slideshow of the King and the royal family.   I looked it up later and the song is the Royal Anthem which used to be the national anthem and is still played before every movie in Thailand as well as some other performances.

The movie didn't get out until almost 1am and everything was deserted, including the mall, we had trouble figuring out how to get out since they'd roped off the way that we had come in.  We did see a midnight game of soccer though.