Food and tourism

The Good Life with Eli F.J. Tajanlangit

I've been to Bangkok a few times, and I must say, it never fails to engage me, not just because of the sights and sensations it offers, but also for the tourism lessons and inspiration it imparts and sparks.

If you look closely, Thailand is very similar to the Philippines, and what its people have done to bring in those tourists who oftentimes wait for two to three hours in immigration lines to get in, could very well be implemented in our country.

No, I am not saying we all start learning how to cook pad thai and drench our suman in rose water. What I am trying to say is, let us use our own culture to attract people to our country, the way the Thais did. At the heart of Thailand's tourism success is the fact that it has sold nothing extraordinary, much less extravagant, than its own culture. In other words, it built its tourism program on the strength of its very own lifestyle.

For example, the street food culture of Bangkok serves the Thailanders themselves before anybody else. Whether tourists come or not, the food stalls on the side-streets of the city will always thrive because they are part of the city's way of life.

The locals say most of them do not cook at home, and are big on eating out – whether on the sidewalks or in restaurants. This is why food here, especially on the streets, is very good, because there is a natural quality control mechanism at work: people will not come back if they are not satisfied with what you offer them the first time.

Actually, street food thrived out of neighborhoods, where they catered to the residents. You want good pork barbecue, you go to this corner; you want nice hot noodles proceed to that stall, and so on and so forth. In other words, the street food hawkers are the best cooks for the line of food they sell.

The operating word here, really, is local. The Thais capitalized on their local strengths, i.e., in this case, flavors to draw the tourists in. Of course, over time, they had to redraw things so appeal to various markets as well.

Like our piaya, which now has plenty of variants, many of the iconic foods of Thailand have developed their own versions. But unlike our piaya, the development of their food icons was spearheaded by their government. An example of what was done on this front was its sticky rice with mango and coconut milk—anywhere you go, this one use the same ingredients, but they have slight differences to accommodate tourist sensibilities.

The street version is the cheapest and ‘homemade' as we put it. It is also decidedly the freshest, though, with freshly-peeled and freshly-cut mangoes and freshly-squeezed coconut milk. Another version, sold at the Gourmet Market in Paragon, is delicious as well – but you notice how the coconut milk must have been processed to prolong its shelf life, and the mangoes obviously coming from chillers.

But things do not end there. They have brought this traditional dessert up in scale of things: as a branded dish. Over at the café at the Jim Thompson main shop, this sticky rice with mango and coconut milk use the best kind of ingredients: the rice was topnotch, firm but soft and really sticky, the mangos are succulent and sweet, and the coconut milk tastes like it was squeezed just before serving.

I thought this is one shining example of how the Thais have used a household dish to titillate the international market: by keeping what is truly local, but enhancing things where they can so foreign tourists can not only take them but love them, in fact.*

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