It's sports day, Jim, but not as we know it

Today is sports day. I arrive at school and very quickly realise this definitely does not imply the day will be anything like a sports day in the UK. The day starts at the pier. I stand surrounded by cavemen, transvestites, girls in Thai costume, smurfs, kids dressed up as appliances (?), a mermaid, real policemen, and a marching band playing "It's the final countdown".

We parade down the street to the school, where they parade around a bit more, and then we have fireworks. Fireworks! I don't believe I've ever seen fireworks at 9:15 am before.

There are four houses - orange, blue, green, and red - and each has a theme. The orange team has a sort of Thai-style fantastical theme, with dragons and stuff. The blue team is all spacey. The green team has taken the new Bangkok airport as their theme (Michael: "those geeks! They're probably all gonna grow up to be computer programmers!"), and the red team has the King (which means, bizarrely, the red team's support is all in yellow, the King's colour).

I decide to support the red team, because I was in red house at Usk school. Red team perform pretty badly in most of the races - for some reason all the red team runners seemed to be the smallest ones. Then Michael and Dino decide to take part in the 400 metres. They lose. They would have come last if two of the runners hadn't fallen over at the corner ("those kids are fast!").

And then it's the cheer competition. First the orange team dance around. Then the green team come out - the girls have aeroplane headdresses! Maybe it's not such an uncool theme after all. The blue team! The blue team are cool. They're dressed up in futuristic space costumes. And they have the most sassy dance. Red team are pretty cool too - they have convertible costumes (think like Bucks Fizz at Eurovision, only different).

The morning's races over, there's a stage set up in the hall. Way to go - halftime entertainment! We get the school rock bands playing (they're pretty good, too!). Just when I think the day can't get any more surreal, the place has turned into a moshpit.

I gotta go now, my internet time has run out! I'll try and improve this tomorrow.