Last Week’s Story
I wrote a blog post about Thai milk tea and how challenging it was to find a plant-based milk, sugar-free option.
You can read that story here.
Mango Sticky Rice Story
I must admit that I was going to procrastinate writing today’s travel story and what made me decide not to is that I plan to delete most of the Thailand trip photos from my phone’s album tomorrow morning.
That’s why, I thought to share the last (and most traumatizing) story from my 25 days in Thailand.
While staying at my second luxury boutique hotel in Bangkok, I got a recommendation from the super friendly hotel staff for a nearby mango sticky rice shop. They explained that this place was the best mango sticky rice spot in the entire city.
Because I wanted to create high-quality content for my blog, I decided to check out that famous mango sticky rice place. Of course, that also meant that I will take photos to document the story.
I walked to the nearby stall (located a few minutes away from my hotel) and I found the place easily.
Before walking into the store to buy some mango sticky rice, I started taking many pictures of the stall from outside and of the over-ripe mangos lining the entrance. When I take photos, I tend to click many snaps so that I can choose the best ones later. I also take close-up shots and wide shots – I did study journalism after all.
When I eventually went inside the store, a local Thai woman who works there was being very aggressive and abusive even while packing my mango sticky rice! For no reason, she was just throwing the mango sticky rice ingredients into a plastic bag and showing extreme anger and hostility towards me!
I noticed that she didn’t add the cream sauce and toppings (that’s a main part of the dessert) and so I asked her for it. She continued to throw the stuff into the bag in a very hostile and aggressive way!
I took my mango sticky rice back to the hotel to eat it in the lobby. I realized that it wasn’t even half as good as the one that I had at the Kimpton Maa-Lai hotel’s breakfast buffet, where I stayed for around nine nights. Although that hotel was very pretentious and touristy, their breakfast buffet was truly something special. The ingredients of all the dishes were so fresh and of great quality and everything was made to perfection.
The mango sticky rice at the Kimpton Maa-Lai was truly the best that I’ve ever tried. They would replenish it whenever it finished and the mango chunks were super fresh and not over-ripe like the one at the toxic Thonglor shop!
What I Realized About Thailand and Thai People
I shared with a hotel staff (from the same hotel where I was recommended the famous mango sticky rice place) what happened. I simply said that the woman at the shop was rude. The staff member replied with: “They don’t speak English.”
Of course not speaking English and abusing customers are two very different and separate things.
As I shared in earlier posts, most Thai people don’t speak a single word of English. I think I mentioned that in previous stories.
But what happened at the famous mango sticky rice shop has nothing to do with a language barrier. It was pure rude, abusive and toxic behavior.
I want to add that the shop wasn’t busy at all when I visited. It was literally empty and I was the only one buying at the time. I think it was on a rainy day and so there were no customers at the shop.
I also want to share that this was definitely not the first incident where I experienced rudeness and hostility in my first ever Thailand trip. By the time of this incident, I had already experienced rude locals at different public places in the country. I just checked the date and found out that the story happened on August 2. I left the country around five days later. By this date, you can say that I was immune to the rudeness of locals but this was the most shocking and traumatizing experience in my 25-day trip.
What I discovered after I got back to Dubai and read some articles on Thailand is that Thai people don’t like confrontation. And when you confront them, they resort to hostility and aggression.
Although I didn’t specifically confront anyone in the mango sticky rice incident, I think that taking too many photos of the shop made the local woman uncomfortable and this could go under the confrontation category.
All I can say is that it’s worth investing a lot of time and energy into researching the culture and habits of the locals for any destination that you plan on visiting. And learn about the rules and regulations.
Thailand is a place that to me was very misaligned with my personality and life path in general.
If you experienced any kind of childhood trauma/abuse, I suggest that you visit Bali. The locals are very kind, friendly and everyone speaks English. Plus they have daily and weekly ceremonies to cleanse and purify the energy in the island. I will share more about this topic in a future blog post.
Apart from the food, my Thailand trip was very disappointing and I experienced a lot of dark energy.
I’ll end the story by saying that each person has their unique life path. So maybe if you didn’t experience trauma or abuse, then the local people’s attitude won’t affect you that much or get to you.
But for someone who grew up with emotional and verbal abuse, Thailand was very triggering and re-traumatizing.
Leaving you with some shots from that trip to the dark mango sticky rice place.
Now, I will delete all the phots from my phone to help erase the memory.
Love,
Leela
