Monday, May 30, 2005

Weekend shows in Bangkok

My family and the in-laws went out to see Guangzhou Acrobat yesterday. There were perhaps 5000 audiences packed in the 2 p.m. round. The show was great and we enjoyed very much. It 's worth the high cost we spent.
But the internal traffic inside the Suan Lum's night bazaar was terribly unmanaged.
On our way out, we lost 15 min time sitting packed, like canned Sardines, inside an ummoved taxi. Shame on the managements of BEC TERO Hall and the night bazaar.

I don't think our family members were much interested in the Miss Universe Pageants, currently being organized across the city at the Impact Hall. We don't even watch the globally televised program.
Looks like the Thai government has poured some half a billion Baht on co-sponsoring this event in the hope of promoting our beautify country and charming culture to the World.
However, seeing international pageants in a TV commercial doing a "Wai" in the Thai way made me felt uneasy about the unnatural expression showed by foreigners. I am curious of how the global viewers would feel.
In a slightly related agenda about the Pageants, a number of Thai people were criticizing about awarding the best costume to the Miss Thailand, thinking that the award was politically motivated to please the host country and felt ashamed of it.
That is after the unfavorably buzz when some Pageants naivedly posed in swim suits in front of some Bangkok landmark temples.
Althought they are "photographotropic" landmarks, Buddhist temples and the palaces, perhaps like those of other religions and countries, are places where people were trained to show respect, in the way they dress and behave.
We were trained to dress properly before entering them and take our shoes off before entering the Uposot (the main halls or areas) and restrain our manners and actions. Thus, wearing bikinis in front of them strike the Thai people emotionally
although we are also culturally trained well enought to not criticizing our unknowning international guests (the Pageants). However, the Thai organizers received the blame in full.
Glad that they did not publicizing those pictures too much, although some newspapers did. Those cases show our Thai sensitivity toward the management of the event.

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