I ended up at Chiang Mai's ASEAN festival today. Don't ask.
There were huge paper sculptures draped in Christmas lights; one was a peacock and the other was a horse that I think was copied directly from an advert I saw for My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. The idea was that you went around to a series of booths representing each country, got your "passport" stamped (because as all of us who've traveled extensively in the ASEAN bloc know, there's nothing more fun than a recreation of going through immigration!), and sampled the food.
Except you weren't allowed to sample the food.
Well, okay, a couple of booths actually DID have samples set out, and I got to try some very nice Malaysian chicken with rice, peanuts, and dried shrimp. Most of them, though, were a wash. Laos was still frantically cooking, by which I mean "languidly poking a single chicken leg in red curry"; Indonesia and Brunei Darussalam only had single, rather elderly display plates of food. Cambodia, if asked, would very politely lift the lid off a steamer and show you a sole serving of amok, which was either not done yet or Not for the Likes of You. And a handful of others had their samples ready to go, but we plebians couldn't touch them until the interview segment.
This bit was, admittedly, awesome: two young Thai presenters (both in traditional garb for the occasion, but you could tell from his spiked hair and her glitter eyeshadow that they would both be a lot more at home in more fashionable threads) were making the rounds, sampling the food and making terrible, terrible banter about each country. I think most of the terrible banter was his fault. Cultural expectations being what they are here (and, to be fair, in the West as well), he was supposed to be entertaining and engage with people, and she was supposed to laugh demurely and support him. But he was clearly foundering, both with the language in the English segments and with the task overall, and she seemed to be trying her best, through gritted teeth, to get him to up his game.
"Now, you speak some Laos, don't you?" she asked sweetly.
"No," he declared, "I don't speak Laos."
"Come on, a little bit?"
He stared at her. Crickets chirped. A pan-ASEAN tumbleweed rolled past.
I caught up with them at the Burma (sorry, Myanmar) booth, where he was flailing about asking people for a translation of nam prik gung, the food on offer, and she was following him trying to get his attention. After she finally snagged him long enough to whisper in his ear, he grinned and announced, "Chili Shimp! It is Chili Shimp!"
"Everyone can try the Chili Shrimp of Myanmar!" she called out, which I think makes for a better tourist slogan than "The Golden Land".
A couple of Westerners went up: a young man in yoga pants who professed to like the dish, but had some trouble with the spice, and an older American woman I'd seen wandering around, interrogating people about the ingredients on display at each booth (to the point where I'd wanted to yell, "It's garlic! You're pointing at garlic! Where the hell do you come from that you don't know what GARLIC is?"). She asked worriedly whether it was spicy, and, on tasting it, recoiled with a horrified expression.
Amateurs.
A mix of free food and showing people up appeals to pretty much everything my id craves, so I strolled to the front and asked to taste, and made a big show of appreciating the flavour. (It had a tiny kick to it, and was very nice.) The cameraman zoomed in on my reaction to a degree that probably came out borderline pornographic. The male presenter asked where I was from.
"I am from U.S.," I told him, because I've spent years telling people I'm from America and being corrected ("Ah, U.S.!").
"Ah, U.S.!" he said on cue, and then stared at me with a lost expression before offering, in a tiny voice, "United Kingdom...?"
There were huge paper sculptures draped in Christmas lights; one was a peacock and the other was a horse that I think was copied directly from an advert I saw for My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. The idea was that you went around to a series of booths representing each country, got your "passport" stamped (because as all of us who've traveled extensively in the ASEAN bloc know, there's nothing more fun than a recreation of going through immigration!), and sampled the food.
Except you weren't allowed to sample the food.
Well, okay, a couple of booths actually DID have samples set out, and I got to try some very nice Malaysian chicken with rice, peanuts, and dried shrimp. Most of them, though, were a wash. Laos was still frantically cooking, by which I mean "languidly poking a single chicken leg in red curry"; Indonesia and Brunei Darussalam only had single, rather elderly display plates of food. Cambodia, if asked, would very politely lift the lid off a steamer and show you a sole serving of amok, which was either not done yet or Not for the Likes of You. And a handful of others had their samples ready to go, but we plebians couldn't touch them until the interview segment.
This bit was, admittedly, awesome: two young Thai presenters (both in traditional garb for the occasion, but you could tell from his spiked hair and her glitter eyeshadow that they would both be a lot more at home in more fashionable threads) were making the rounds, sampling the food and making terrible, terrible banter about each country. I think most of the terrible banter was his fault. Cultural expectations being what they are here (and, to be fair, in the West as well), he was supposed to be entertaining and engage with people, and she was supposed to laugh demurely and support him. But he was clearly foundering, both with the language in the English segments and with the task overall, and she seemed to be trying her best, through gritted teeth, to get him to up his game.
"Now, you speak some Laos, don't you?" she asked sweetly.
"No," he declared, "I don't speak Laos."
"Come on, a little bit?"
He stared at her. Crickets chirped. A pan-ASEAN tumbleweed rolled past.
I caught up with them at the Burma (sorry, Myanmar) booth, where he was flailing about asking people for a translation of nam prik gung, the food on offer, and she was following him trying to get his attention. After she finally snagged him long enough to whisper in his ear, he grinned and announced, "Chili Shimp! It is Chili Shimp!"
"Everyone can try the Chili Shrimp of Myanmar!" she called out, which I think makes for a better tourist slogan than "The Golden Land".
A couple of Westerners went up: a young man in yoga pants who professed to like the dish, but had some trouble with the spice, and an older American woman I'd seen wandering around, interrogating people about the ingredients on display at each booth (to the point where I'd wanted to yell, "It's garlic! You're pointing at garlic! Where the hell do you come from that you don't know what GARLIC is?"). She asked worriedly whether it was spicy, and, on tasting it, recoiled with a horrified expression.
Amateurs.
A mix of free food and showing people up appeals to pretty much everything my id craves, so I strolled to the front and asked to taste, and made a big show of appreciating the flavour. (It had a tiny kick to it, and was very nice.) The cameraman zoomed in on my reaction to a degree that probably came out borderline pornographic. The male presenter asked where I was from.
"I am from U.S.," I told him, because I've spent years telling people I'm from America and being corrected ("Ah, U.S.!").
"Ah, U.S.!" he said on cue, and then stared at me with a lost expression before offering, in a tiny voice, "United Kingdom...?"
"United States," his long-suffering companion hissed.
He stared at me a minute longer, then trilled, "Thank you!"
So, I think the taping was just for the Jumbotron on the other side of the plaza (I am not kidding), but it's possible I've ended up on some local news channel, pornographically eating The Chili Shrimp of Myanmar and confusing Thai people.
A fitting way to leave my placement, really.
He stared at me a minute longer, then trilled, "Thank you!"
So, I think the taping was just for the Jumbotron on the other side of the plaza (I am not kidding), but it's possible I've ended up on some local news channel, pornographically eating The Chili Shrimp of Myanmar and confusing Thai people.
A fitting way to leave my placement, really.
