I was tucking into some delicious khao nieo mamuang (mangoes and sticky rice) at a friend's house the other day and the conversation inevitably turned to teenage Thai rapper Milli, (Danupha Khanatheerakul) and her eye-catching performance at the Coachella music festival in California.
Some might argue it's not really news, but at least it's sort of cheerful and I'll settle for that over all the bleak reports we are subjected to on a daily basis. I wonder if Milli could help out the Brits in similar fashion by performing a show featuring strawberries and cream?
I'm not much of a rap fan but was impressed by Milli's stage presence and rapid-fire vocals at Coachella. Her creative promotion of mangoes and sticky rice reportedly prompted a surge of sales of the dish in Thailand, not that any Thais really needed reminding of its appeal.
I have a particular fondness for khao nieo mamuang as it was one of the first dishes I ever consumed in Thailand. I had only been in Bangkok a couple of days and while walking along a soi in Makkasan came across a farang sitting at a mango and sticky rice stall. He motioned for me to join him and recommended I try the dish. It was truly magnificent and in those days only cost a few baht.
That friendly fellow turned out to be Brett Bartos, a New Zealander who happened to work at the Bangkok Post. He was the first person I really met after arriving in Bangkok and proved helpful in those early days with wise advice for a clueless new arrival like myself.
But his most important contribution was introducing me to khao nieo mamuang.
Mango diplomacy
After Milli's performance the US Embassy in Bangkok got into the spirit of things by posting on Facebook a photo of the Mount Rushmore presidents staring at plates of mangoes and sticky rice and reacting with an emphatic "Wow!". They also invented a new word, "mangonificent", which is frankly a bit of a mouthful and I suspect would prompt a few frowns if you tried to use it in a Scrabble tournament.
The village school
I also associate mangoes with my late maid's village in Yasothon province which colleague Tony Waltham and I visited many times in the 1990s.
On one occasion we slept on the floor of the headmaster's office at the local school. It was a typical small village school fronted by an overgrown football field. The whole place was run down, but what it lacked in maintenance it more than made up for in mangoes.
The entire field was lined with small but fully laden mango trees which groaned under the weight of the fruit. The villagers were only allowed to pick a mango if given permission by the headmaster, a trust system that seemed to work. I felt a bit guilty when the headmaster presented us with generous bagfuls of the fruit as we were leaving.
Alien tongues
Of course there are a few unfortunate people who do not appreciate mangoes. There was a classic article in London's Daily Mail more than a century ago when an English journalist took his first bite of a mango which he described as "something like a squashed rugby ball". He related the experience as follows:
"You will never forget your first mouthful of mango. Protests of various kinds are transmitted from the surprised palate to the brain. Imagine influenza medicines, turpentine, sugar and soap eaten out of a spoon dipped in paraffin."
I would love to have read his comments on durian.
The sticky stuff
Sticky rice is a staple food in Thailand, particularly in the Northeast. Visit any house in Isan and it won't be long before the khao nieo comes out, usually in those lovely kratip containers. Foreigners invariably receive murmurs of approval from villagers if they are seen tucking in to the sticky stuff.
The biggest seal of approval however is that in Isan they hold assorted Miss Sticky Rice beauty pageants. Being named as a title for a beauty contest is the ultimate accolade in Thailand. That is why, in addition to Miss Sticky Rice we have appreciated the charms of Miss Coconut, Miss Pineapple, Miss Watermelon and even the splendid Miss Grasshopper.
Samila stand-off
Thai beauty pageants can be more entertaining than one might imagine as witnessed in the 2020 Miss Samila contest in Songkhla. It had reached the semi-final featuring 10 contestants of which five would advance to the final while the other five would be told to buzz off. The only problem was the "other five" refused to accept the judges' decision claiming someone "influential" had interfered with the voting … the very thought!
One contestant demanded to see the judges' scores, but this was rejected fuelling suspicions there was something funny going on. Facing an awkward situation the organisers hastily declared all 10 contestants winners and they shared the 200,000-baht prize.
Pass the tiara
Thailand must be one of the few countries in which beauty pageants are still taken seriously. Alas sometimes it all ends in tears. There was drama in a beauty pageant some years ago when a crestfallen losing beauty snatched the tiara off the head of the winner and without saying a word placed it on her own head, and even managed a theatrical snarl. Now that's entertainment.
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