Cheering for the Beetles! Chiang Rai United Football Match

             Chiang Rai is the closest “big” city to Chiang Saen.  “Big” meaning that it has about 200,000 residents (compared to Chiang Saen’s population of about 10,000), a football team, a mall, a movie theater, and American food!  Needless to say, whenever we start feeling homesick we will take the one dollar, hour and a half bus ride to Chiang Rai!

            

             After visiting the White Temple discussed in the previous post, we headed to Chiang Rai stadium for the match.  One thing people all around the world have in common is their love for football, and we were happy to experience football in Thailand when we attended this match between Chiang Rai United and Army United, a team from Bangkok. Both of these teams play in the Thai Professional League.   As with everything in Thailand, we were also pleasantly surprised with how inexpensive this experience would be: each ticket was 80 Baht, less than $3.00.  

Us with Peter in front of the Chiang Rai United beetle

The Chiang Rai United mascot

            The first thing we noticed when we arrived at the stadium was that everyone was wearing their orange Chiang Rai United jerseys.  We’d already seen Chiang Rai United bumper stickers all over town and heard all about Chiang Rai United from our students, but we were still impressed by the energy and spirit we witnessed at the stadium.

The game was very exciting.  We sat in a section right by Chiang Rai United’s fan club, so that made the game even more fun to watch.  Several different guys stood up front and led cheers throughout the game, our favorite being an adaptation of Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance” song.  Luckily, we caught it on video, watch it here!
 Sitting in this spot also meant that we were right behind the goal, with no safety nets up to protect us…this led to the most exciting moment of the game, when Jon got hit by a soccer ball that missed the goal!

One of the Chiang Rai United cheerleaders

The only downside of the game was that Army United scored in the final minutes of the first half and eventually won the game.