Bonadonnathon

Bonadonnathon group!

I am surrounded by a bunch of creative, funny and amazing people in Nakhon Sri Thammarat, Thailand who made the Bonadonnathon a success. This weekend, last year, a tragic accident happened just outside of town at a waterfall. One of the foreign teachers fell down into a whirlpool. I never knew Angelo Bonadonna but I’ve heard wonderful stories about him.

When I read my facebook invite to the Bonadonnathon event I was so happy people who knew Angelo were honoring his life in such a positive way. The Bonadonnathon was a series of games themed around Angelo’s life. It was a hilarious day. Which from what I know about Angelo that’s probably how he would like his life to be remembered, not sadly.

The day started with partners arriving bright and early in team themed costumes. With each new arrival I was impressed with the creativity. The winning team was the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Another team was Fred Flintstone and Betty. We had a Christmas themed team, a Ben Ten team, sparkly amazon women, a Fabulous team, a painted team, M&M’s, and many teams that included cross-dressed men. I was very impressed with the clever costumes, you can see some costumes in the pictures.


My partner Andrea and I were pirates. We dressed in our most piratey clothes then each painted one of our legs brown to look like we had peg legs. Our team name was Saw Wat Dee Karrrrrrrrrrrrr. It was a clever name thought up by our friend Dee. If you haven’t been reading my blog or forgot, "Saw Wat Dee Kah (girls)/Krap (boys)" is the greeting in Thailand. So we figured pirates are a different class of boys and girls so we’ll make our “sugar on top word” be pirate like, “karrrr”.

Saw Wat Dee Karrrr!

Once everyone was settled down from the excitement of seeing all the amazing costumes, we started the first challenge of the day. Angelo was a math teacher at the school I teach at. So we started off with a math quiz. It was refreshingly easy! Then we had a pop culture quiz based on the pop culture Angelo liked. There were many Simpson questions and Chicago sports team questions. After the written challenge the teams headed outside for more challenges.

the written portion

The next challenges were a basketball shooting and a frisbee throwing competition, because Angelo played those sports. One teammate shot the basketball and the other shot the frisbee. I shot the frisbee so I was there to rebound while Andrea shot as many free throws she could in thirty seconds. Only the top five teams could earn points so we didn’t place in the basketball. But we actually placed fifth in the frisbee competition thanks to my luck! 

This is when it got a bit silly. The next challenge involved tying a long cucumber around your waist and thrusting your hips to move a tennis ball across the basketball courts to your partner where you then switch the cucumber device and the other teammate goes back. The first team to get the ball back wins! The flimsy cucumbers lasted for one round (my round) then we switched to water bottles. We again did not win but this was a very entertaining game to watch. 

Cucumber line up

thrusting 

The school, and host of the event, graciously provided everyone with my favorite weekday lunch, yellow curry rice with chicken, kao muk gai. After lunch we had desert in the form of two eating contests. The first contest involved us running to open mystery foil wrapped foods and eating them as quickly as we can before running back to tag our partner. There were six mystery items which we learned were; an orange, squid, five chewy candies (similar to starburst), an onion, crackers and cheese, and a cracker with spicy fishy sauce. We were allowed to pass our food onto our partner if we couldn’t eat it but it had to be eaten before we could open the next one. I was lucky I got the orange and the candies. I would not have enjoyed the squid. In fact we didn’t have to eat the onion or the squid because five teams finished before we got to those. It took me forever to eat the orange and the candies. I had to peal the orange then eat it and it had many seeds. I was making people laugh by spiting seeds out as I was frantically eating the orange. Then the five candies were individually wrapped and took FOREVER to chew. I’m glad Andrea and I didn’t have to eat the squid.

Opening the mystery foods

Feeding each other ice cream

To make up for the crazy foods we ate in that race we had an ice cream eating competition. Angelo’s goal was to finish an eight-scoop ice cream from Swenson’s but he was unable to do so. This is where the contest idea came from then Kait, Stu and Joe added their own clever spin. Each two person team had one bowl and one spoon and were told we could not feed ourselves, our partner had to feed us. Well it’s quicker if two people are eating so Andrea and I washed our hands and decided one person would get fed with the other teammate's hands. Once we sat down we decided we should both just use hands to make it fair. So Andrea and I fed each other ice cream with our hands. It’s quite interested picking up ice cream and feeding it to someone else with your hands as well as getting fed ice cream with someone elses hands. We didn’t win that round either but we did take our friendship to a new level.   

 Mac and I after the ice cream eating contest

It’s not over! Yes, we were hot and tired but yes, we were still excited and having fun! The last challenge was a scavenger hunt. At first Andrea and I said we’d do a few things then stop earlier than the three hours allotted to rest and shower since there was no chance we were winning. Our brown peg legs were melting in the heat as was our energy. But once we got started on fun picture taking journey around Nakhon, we couldn’t stop.

The scavenger hunt was a great way to explore the town and push ourselves to take silly pictures. We did not change our clothes before heading out for the scavenger hunt and many of the teams did not either. I wonder what the Thai locals thought of all the farangs running around in strange clothing asking them to take odd pictures with us. We asked local Thais to take a picture sharing a foot-long hot dog and a coconut. Those were some of the most awkward questions to ask the strangers to help us with but they were the most memorable pictures.

I witnessed these two riding around town dressed like this during the scavenger hunt, so brave!

Andrea and I ended up completing half of the 80 required tasks. Some of which include, doing a dance on camera (we did a pirate dance), taking pictures on a rickshaw as the driver/passengers, taking pictures on a bus, a boat, going down a slide, with random animals like an emu, eating strange foods that Angelo liked, sharing food with strangers, turning ourselves into toilet paper mummies. Some tasks we didn’t complete but others in the group did were; climbing trees naked, getting a tattoo (yes, some people did get tattoos), going to Angelo’s house (we didn’t know him personally so did not know where it was but apparently he lived in a tree house, super cool), taking pictures with shadow puppets and street vendors, on a horse ride at the shopping center and many others.

Once we turned our memory card in for scoring we were free to shower and nap. After being in the 95 degree sun and running around all day I was able to pass out for a good three hour nap. I woke up just in time to meet everyone at the Full Moon Bar for the results. Andrea and I did not place in the top three as there were twenty teams and we didn’t win many challenges. But I didn’t play to win. I played to support my friends in their memory of their lost friend. After the winners we were announced we danced the night away as our friends D.J.ed and hula hooped and fire poied. Their talents make me want to take up a cool hobby.

I was very impressed with the day. I give major props to Joe, Kaitlin, and Stu for planning this event. They have a great sense of humor that kept all twenty teams interested from 10 am until 5 pm. I admire their ability to laugh and enjoy the day when last year it was such a sad day.   

*pictures of the scavenger hunt coming soon