The sights . . .
The smells . . .
The action . . .
The clothes . . .
The crowds . . .
The kids . . .
You enter the event grounds and it hits you like a great idea. People laugh. People smile. Bouncy music sets your hips a swayin’. You find your arms swing sideways, your wrists cocked, fingers extended. Your heels lift from the hot concrete. There’s a bounce in your step.
Then you get an unmistakeble whiff of the Thai food. You smell the chilis, the curries, the cilantro, the fruits seem to glow from the inside. You get within hearing distance of the PA and the lovely tones of the Thai language take you back to the markets, the bars, the streets, the malls, the TV soaps, the music blaring at ear bleeding level at Siam Square.
Then you think of a specific time, riding the Skytrain, watching the beautiful girls getting on the train and well behaved children being invited to sit down on a seat which an adult just freshly evacuated so the adorable 3-year-old can sit, and backpackers occupying twice as much physical space with their turtle homes on their backs, threatening to sideswipe a delicate teen with a cooking pot. Okay, not everything is pleasant to remember.
So it is with great joy I woke up Saturday morning, July 17, knowing I could re-enter Thailand not 15,000 km away but 1 km away. I was there both days for hours, even if I was doing nothing in particular except eating twice each visit, shooting a couple hundreds pictures (many rather crappy ones, I must say) and just taking in the gentle smiles and the sappy music and the delicious smells.
Attendance seemed rock solid both days. The number of vendors and participants was down though. However, it seemed like one of the best Tastes of Thailand events I have been to. Mind you they could have put a bowl of Thai fruits under the spotlight and I would have stared at it for hours.
One note of outrage, if it’s true, and it had nothing to do with organizer Thai Society of Ontario: I couldn’t buy water. I wasn’t able to confirm this with a City of Toronto official, but one vendor said she had no water to sell because of the vendors outside of the square who sell hotdogs, fries and the like, and bottled water for an outrageous $1.50. It think it may be true because I checked all the Thai vendor tables twice and no one had water on display, although they had soft drinks. Last time, in 2008 (2009 was cancelled because of a civic workers strike) you could buy ice cold water from a single on-site Thai vendor. But because of some commercial rule or maybe agreement with outside vendors, the Tastes of Thailand vendors were not allowed to sell water. How freakin’ outrageous is that?!?! It’s usually stinking hot and steamy in July here and I can go through at least two 500 ml bottles a visit. I’ll try to confirm this with the city on a work day.
Some pictures rather than words from 2010 Tastes of Thailand Toronto . . .
A treat for HooDon of Beyond the Big Mango Juice above ;-)
