Chinese Festival

For five days the Chinese carnival came to town here in Buakhao. A huge market selling plastic junk and knock-off clothes was nothing new, but along with it came a ferris wheel, bumper cars, numerous rigged games and nightly Mor-Lam dance shows. The scene was always strange and often disturbing. Young children inaccurately shot BB guns at targets and they lady running the game was holding her infant in her arms. Along with the classic stuffed animal prizes each of the stands dared adults to play as well by offering beer and whiskey as prizes.

Tempted by the huge stuffed animals and the beer, I made the usual, wrong assumption that the games were winnable, and started to take my chances. At one point I popped five balloons and was excited to have my choice of a stuffed animal for Taraneh or a beer for myself. Then when I pointed to the beer, the lady smiled and shook her head before offering me the choice of a Coca-Cola bottle-opener key chain or a flimsy Budweiser pen. Why or how they had Budweiser pens was strange enough, but the real question was whether to quit while I had only paid 20 Baht for my lame key chain or to keep playing. Having seen this played out before, I quit and kept my bottle-opener key chain.

One game, in which one must knock over a pyramid of cans with three tennis balls, was obviously rigged because the cans were weighted at the bottom and sprang back up after being knocked down. Worse than that, but making the entire scene funny is that fact that Thais are inept at throwing. The most common sports here are soccer, takra (like volleyball but played by kicking a whicker ball over the net), volleyball, and badminton. Throwing a baseball, and especially a football, is entirely foreign to Thais. Asking them to throw tennis balls at the cans is like asking me to spike a whicker ball over a volleyball net with my foot; there’s no way in hell. I’ve seen girls more accurately shoot darts out of their….er… wait, that’s a different story.


Anyways, the prize of beer and whiskey was too great a temptation for many men and they continued to take their shots at the cans. Many thought that strength was the ticket, but ended up coming closer to knocking over the bottles of beer instead. After watching many failed attempts, I finally shucked out 20 baht and took my three tennis balls. With my first throw I knocked over all but two cans, which were re-stacked on top of each other. By then, the crowd standing around and walking by stopped to watch and had collectively started cheering for me, presumably in defiance of their inability to take home a prize themselves. With the second throw I was able to hit the two cans down, but the bottom one miraculously sprang back to its feet and stood again. Still, the crowd cheered and I could hear the excitement for the third throw. I knew that if I could knock the final can down everyone would cheer as if I had won a keg for everyone. I hucked the third ball and whiff….missed the can entirely. The crowd, disappointed, unexcitedly cheered me for my attempt then moved up to the front each taking their turn and winning a prize.

After watching for a while longer I saw one older man finally knock down all the cans and when the lady handed him his bottle of beer her cheered and hugged as if he were a child winning a teddy bear.

There wasn’t anything really Chinese about all of the games, but hidden in the back corner of the festival was a brightly lit neon stage with actors in strange neon customs and what I am guessing to be traditional Chinese make-up, singing in perhaps the worst voice I’ve ever heard. These women sounded like something in between alley cat in heat and a dying giraffe. Even stranger were all the young Thai kids who were standing near the stage, motionless, staring at the show. They were hypnotized by the women and their high-pitched whining. I could stand the music just long enough to take this picture before I had to get away.