Thursday, June 9, 2011

Khantoke Dinner & Cultural Show

On Monday night when the visitors from DPI were still here we went to a popular tourist event - Khantoke Dinner & Cultural Show. Basically its dinner with a show kinda like the fabulous dinner shows in Myrtle Beach haha but it is Northern Thailand themed.

Khantoke is actually the type of platter they serve a family style meal on. There was an interesting assortment of Northern Thai food and farang food: fried chicken (supposedly its Korean too), sweet crunchy rice, tomato sauce, green pepper sauce (actually wants spicy), friend pork skins, beef stew kind dish, vegetables, and pumpkin fries (which were my favorite on the platter). Seating is usually on the floor but you can request a table which is what we did.


Part of the way through the meal the dancing started. They preformed 5 or 6 dances that were based in the Lanna Kingdom tradition. Chiang Mai and some of the surrounding area did not start off as part of Siam. It was originally part of the Lanna Kingdom, but instead of being colonized by the French or British it sided with Siam.

 The fingernail dance.
 
 A dance based off of Northern Thai martial arts.


 Then we all were invited onstage to preform the  circle/friendship dance. Its basically just walking in a circle with some hand movements.

Then we went outside for the Hill tribe dances.
 The same boy from the sword dance above played the drums while the other boys held it. He would use the mallets as well as his elbows and knees. The one on the right is a stick dance done by kids. I think I learned something like this in girl scouts when I was little.

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