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Roadhouse BBQ

Bangkok, Thailand – It was my parents third day in Thailand. So what in god’s good name were we doing at the Roadhouse BBQ? I suppose I have to go back a few years to explain why I would take my foodie parents to a western restaurant when there are great local eats to be had all over Bangkok.

Almost 40 years ago, my mother, a pre-med student at Mt. Holyoke College, was going door to door with an anti-Vietnam war petition.  At one house, she got a stiff warning from a gruff old man, who told her not to visit the house across the street for (beware!) there was a hippie living there.  As it turns out, that hippie, a local potter, was pretty handsome and so my mother in a take-charge feminist moment invited him to a peace rally, to which he showed up in full hippie gear driving a VW bus covered in flower decals.  And that’s how a nice Jewish boy from Newark and a sweet Japanese-American girl from Pennsylvania met.  Of course, my mother’s parents weren’t too pleased that she’d taken up with an artist several years her senior and my father’s parents weren’t too pleased that he’d taken up with a goy, but forty years later my parents, now with three grown children, are still married, still living in the same house where they first met and still across the street from the same gruff old man.

Though their backgrounds were different, they had the shared cultural experience of being branded as different from what might be called the real America today. My father attended an all-Jewish public high school in Newark, with the likes of Philip Roth and Paul Auster, when Ivy League universities still had quotas on accepting Jews.  My mother’s parents had been interned in the Japanese-American camps during WWII and my mother attended her first civil rights rally at the age of 13, surely guided by my firebrand grandmother who later lobbied successfully for reparations for Japanese-American internees in the 1980s.

These days my parents pal around with academics, artists, and doctors making Bush jokes, eating boucheron (brie is so 1990s), watching MSNBC and doing all those things that liberal-elitists do (reading?). Needless to say, they are Obama-enthusiasts and like much of the nation, tired of what they consider eight long years of a dangerous and polarizing administration, they have been swept away by the magnetism, deep intellect and message of hope of our nation’s first competitive black presidential candidate.  ”He’s just an exceptional human being,” my mother said this morning, recounting his thoughtful and touching response to the passing of his grandmother.  

So there we were at 10 am in the Roadhouse BBQ watching TV with a bunch of farang, not exactly a must-do on the guidebook list, but this was an exceptional day and sometimes, though not often, there are more important things than street food.  Today it was watching the election returns, the culmination of a remarkable 2-year campaign and the making of history.  Still, after rising at 5 am to catch a flight to Bangkok, we needed to eat and along with a hungry, work-bound friend, we ordered some nachos and quesadillas, which were far from delicious and far from our focus.  Around 11 am in Bangkok, CNN called the election for Obama and the room burst with the cheers, hugs and even tears of overjoyed expats buoyed with the hope for greatness, a new affirmation in their country and the privilege to witness an overwhelming acceptance of one of those that America once held as too different to have the same rights as the rest of the country.

It’s not just my parents or Americans who have been captivated by Barack Obama’s candidacy.  As I’ve traveled through Southeast Asia and my nationality is uncovered, locals in Thailand, Laos and Cambodia, as well as expats and travelers from countries all over the world, want to talk about this political phenomenon – “Oh-bah-maaaa.”  I often wonder how in Southeast Asia, where there are deep-seated prejudices towards the darker skinned members of the population and it’s difficult to find a facial wash, moisturizer or even deodorant that is not whitening, a black candidate from halfway around the world has captured the imaginations of the people here.  I still remember a 20-year-old Lao boy in Vientiane asking me who I supported and when I turned the question around, he responded, eyes wide and glittering, “Oh-bah-maaaa, I think he will be good.” 

CNN Calls the Election

Bangok for Obama

Celebrations

The Potter & The Shrink

Watching McCain’s Concession Speech

Watching Obama’s Speech

A Pre-Game Snack: Grilled Sticky Rice & Banana Wrapped in a Banana Leaf