Fair Fighters @ Fairtex Lunch

Third of July was the luncheon for the PILC and it was held at the magnificent Fairtex Ballroom, on Pattaya Nua.  As is the custom, Kavita was collecting fees and Janis was enrolling new memberships; four in all; Denise Hollibone (Australian), Pichada Rajavechpisal (Thai), Malini Varma (Indian), Jannelie Simoons-Hageman (Dutch) - a very sincere and warm welcome to you all.  We hope we can make your adjustment to life in a new home an easier one.

This was a smaller than usual get together, as many of the ladies have travelled back to their homelands with enfant in tow due to school holidays.  That, however, never stops this intrepid group of women from enjoying themselves.  After all, any excuse is a good excuse to have a chat.  We were most fortunate to have a vendor here today, Khun Preeda, who was selling truly beautiful silver jewellery, nick knacks and magnificent porcelain platters, bowls, wine pots etc.  More than a few eager purchases were snapped up by appreciative women!  Thank you Khun Preeda for visiting us.

Roseanne bravely came out for the luncheon, as she is suffering from Dengue Fever at present and valiantly addressed us re matters of interest:-
• Clothes for women in prison and children’s clothing, babies bottles and formula etc.
• Day trip to Bangkok this Thursday July 5, for a “shop till you drop” therapy session
• Nonie organising a trip to Philippines, Manila
• Fairtex offer of a free Hot Yoga session to each lady present today
• Todays raffle raised over 7,000Bht and this will go towards Ban Jing Jai
• Fairtex donated 3 prizes for our raffle and our many thanks got to them for this generous gesture
• A big thankyou to Zena and staff at Fairtex for providing us with such a wonderful lunch and looking after us so well today

We then adjourned downstairs to witness a stunning display of Muay Thai; some of which were our very own PILC members, Chizuko, Stephanie, Virginia and Zena, also from Fairtex was Joah and Groinia.  They demonstrated the match rituals to make your presence known in the ring, along with a ‘dance’ that is performed which is representative of the establishment you train at.  The girls demonstrated with the assistance of their trainers some of the moves; knee kicks, arm and elbow hits, boxing moves etc.  Very fit ladies I might add and lets just say you wouldn’t want to cross them late at night in the street! Bravo Mesdames!!!

This was followed by a frighteningly swift and forceful demonstration by world champion class male Muay Thai fighters.  OUCH! You could literally hear the air whooshing as their legs and arms fled through the air and the tremendous thud as they made contact with their (thankfully) well padded trainers.

We then all returned to the ballroom and enjoyed an amazingly diverse and delicious lunch, and as always, so much laughter and chatter accompanied this ritual.  The raffle winners were drawn, and guess who one of the winners was again?  Yes, Gillian!  Well done.  Long after we had satisfied our appetites we ladies lingered to chat about lots more projects, interests, social happenings, PILC business and then slowly headed off to other things.  I left at 2pm and there were still a handful of guests chatting.  As usual, we all thoroughly enjoyed ourselves and the company at hand and that was not hard to do at such a beautiful venue with such great people.

Faye Vawdrey