Drinking With The Boys

Thailand seems quite odd to me for one major reason: The guys and girls don't really seem to mix that much. In fact, I am not even sure how they meet and get married!

In Bangkok, and other central areas, you will see young couples, but apart from that, relationships seem to be about not being together that much, and then getting married, and then not being together that much some more. Whether this has good points or/and bad points is not the point today as we are looking at what the boys actually get up to.

These photos were taken at a family gathering, in a small Thai town, during the Songkran festival, which is the Thai New Year and is celebrated by throwing a lot of water at each other. The festival can last anywhere from 3 days to 1 month depending on the location.

All of the woman and children gathered at the front of the house and ate and socialised together, and the men retired to the back of the house to drink and have their own meal. On this occasion, there were actually more than 10 men, only a few being present at the time of this photo.

When all the men were present, of course they mainly sat cross legged on the bench with the food and drinks in the middle.

This scene can be found absolutely anywhere on any evening. Just go for a walk in Bangkok and you are bound to come across groups of guys, always drinking and sometimes eating as well.

Drinks come in two flavours.

The first is 'beer' – it really does not matter which brand as they are all so very similar and nothing like a good beer in the UK or other good beer producing countries. Beer usually comes in a shared glass. This does not seem to be because of a lack of glasses but because of social reasons, since when a stranger/visitor turns up, they are more inclined to offer a sip from a half drunk glass than to offer a fresh glass. To prepare a good beer, first the glass is filled with ice, even if the beer is cold, and then the beer added. It does not take long for there to be more water in your glass than beer. The glass must never be empty either, so as the ice melts and the beer get weaker, they will keep adding more ice and topping up with beer.

The second and last choice of drink is usually whiskey and soda water. Again, copious amounts of ice are added, and then a little whiskey and much soda water, with the then mandatory stir with some ice tongs which hardly ever seem to be used to add ice with. The whiskey is hardly ever worth calling whiskey either – maybe I am just spoiled from having been to Scotland. There is one ?whiskey? that is well worth the agony of trying. I forget what it is called just now, but it is called something like “10 degrees” (I may have to correct this later). It can be bought from any 7/11 and can be distinguished from the whiskeys behind the counter by it's beer shaped bottle.

I struggle to see how the Thai men get drunk so quick on such very weak drinks, but they always seem to be able to.

On the bench in these pictures, you can also see the mandatory ice bucket of water and a couple of bottles of seriously powerful pick-me-up drinks which are sometimes also mixed with the whiskey, very much like vodka and red bull or whatever.

As it is Songkran, it is a great opportunity to eat together as well, so it is time for a BBQ!

You can see some sushi which is a little unusual, but you will also see a small round cane looking basket which has sticky rice inside. This is how sticky rice is always kept, and is eaten by digging into it with your hands, each in turn, rolling the rice into a ball using both hands, and then dipping in a dish of food or adding some meat before eating.

One of the features of a boy's get together is that the boys often take joy in cooking, a bit like a Western BBQ. There is often much pride in telling a visiting westerner who prepared which dishes.

On this particular occasion, we ate BBQ pig. The process is not for the faint hearted ….

The pig was a little fella and came in a sack. First he was whacked, still in the sack, with a large piece of wood until he stopped complaining about it. Then he was removed from the sack and thrown into the fire, I assume to burn off all the hair and excess. He was then removed and cut up into pieces.

As a westerner, I was looking, I see a whole beast and I see the large juicy steaks and various cuts, but not so the Thais. They too recognise the various parts of the animal, but they straight away cut every thing into nearly bite sized pieces. But, they do include every part of the animal, and I do mean every part of the animal!

They then use what can be best described, for those who know/remember as device for toasting bread over the fire. It is made up of two wire mesh halves joined with a hinge and a long handle. The pieces of meat are sandwiched between the two sides and then the device held over the fire, turned often until the meat is done.

Various spicy dips are also prepared, so as the meat is ready, you take a piece in your hands, dip it in some spicy dish, add it to a rolled piece of sticky rice, and eat. You can see, on the bench in the photos, some meat cut up on a block, ready to eat, and some dishes of spicy this and that.

The whole process is much finger licking, much communal dipping and no hand washing.

As always, your comments of your own experiences or any additional points and information are more than welcome.