For a couple of reasons, this is going to be brief. The first reason is that I’ve only taken in two live performances while I’ve been in Thailand. The other reason is that photography was forbidden at one of those performances.

Khon Ramakien

The first performance was of the Khon Ramakien, the Thai version of the Ramayana. Which we’ve seen so many times at this point that I feel like I can shout out the lines, like I’m at a Rocky Horror Picture Show screening. “Girl, don’t step outside the circle!” I knew Thailand had its own version, but I honestly hadn’t planned on attending. Ramayana fatigue is real.

I was out walking a new neighborhood in Bangkok of a brutal midday and saw that I was directly across the street from the theater. Noted for future reference, until I noticed the crowd on the steps. I crossed over to check it out, and sure enough, a performance was about to tee off. An air conditioned performance. Sold.

The performance was notable for two things. First, its duration. It came in at a sprightly forty minutes, the thinnest slice of Ramayana we’ve yet been served. Maybe it’s because I’m so familiar with the story, but I wasn’t actually craving more. There’s something to be said for guerrilla Ramayana.

The second notable thing about the performance was the professionalism of the production. Of all the many versions we’ve seen, this one stood out for the quality of the costumes, stage design, lighting, special effects, the whole ball of wax. Everything about it was exceptional. Including the air conditioning. What’s not to love?

I haven’t called out the performance and the music, not because they weren’t good, but because they’ve been uniformly good at all of the various Ramayana performances we’ve seen. It was the production design that really stood head and shoulders above the competition in this performance.

My favorite lines from the supertitles: “Look, monkey. Know that my words are as strong as the mountain. I cannot take them back.” I’m going to start all my sentences from now on with “Look, monkey.” The other was “Only when Rama strokes him from head to tail three times will he be free from the curse.” Which was enacted, but modesty forbids video of such an intimate scene. You’ll just have to trust me that everyone left satisfied.

We’ve never seen the underwater kingdom in any of the other versions we’ve seen, but these folk had the budget and chops to pull it off.

And the Battle Royale.

Look, monkey! That turned out to be, after all the variations we’ve witnessed, the very best version of the Ramayana we’ve seen. Can the cabaret possibly measure up?

Siam Dragon Cabaret

A five-minute walk from my condo brought me to Chiang Mai’s premier, if perhaps only, ladyboy cabaret. Well, why the fuck not? It was obviously that convenient to me for a reason. Who am I to try to outfox kismet?

Of course, had I known that photography was verboten I might have skipped it. I don’t think my experiences are even real unless I can properly share them with you. But I was able to scrape promotional photos from their web site, so you can get a flavor of what went on. Beyond that, words will have to suffice where a picture would be otherwise worth a thousand of them.

Let’s start out with the ladyboy part before we tackle the cabaret part. I’ll confess that I’d had too narrow a definition of ladyboy, or kathoey in Thai. Based on the ladyboy gogo bars in Bangkok, I’d assumed that a Thai ladyboy was, by definition, someone who’d enjoyed some level of medical intervention, from hormone therapy at one end to aftermarket breasts and vaginas at the other.

While those are certainly ladyboys, kathoey embraces the full spectrum, including those who maintain their biological roots but simply prefer to present as women. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that Siam Dragon Cabaret represented kathoey culture with performers at every point on that spectrum. Once I got over the confusion, it read as a lovely form of inclusivity. “I’m not better because I have tits and you don’t. We are all kathoey.”

I would hope that it’s uncontroversial to point out that the Thai are a small folk. That’s not othering, that’s observation. I would likewise hope that it’s uncontroversial to point out that Thai boys tend to start out pretty. The truth is, it doesn’t take a lot of sorcery to turn a pretty Thai boy into a pretty Thai lady. Especially since the Thai, not to overgeneralize, are not an extravagantly busted people. What isn’t achieved through the surgeon’s arts is plausibly attainable the old fashioned way, through padding and bust tape. It’s not a big gap to close.

The range of expression within the culture of kathoey was brought home to me the day after the cabaret. Our guide for a trip to Doi Inthanon National Park was a kathoey who called herself, for our Western ears, Lucy.

Lucy’s presentation as a woman was restrained: lipstick, lilac nail polish, and small silver hoop earrings. That was her entire kit. But she used the term ladyboy to describe herself, and the most obvious manifestation of her identity was actually linguistic.

Thai appends a gendered particle at the end of sentences to indicate respect. If you are a woman you would end your sentence with kha, and if you’re a man you’d use khrap. So a woman would say thank you as kwop kuhn kha, and a man would say kwop kuhn khrap.

Lucy ended her sentences with kha, making it abundantly clear that she identified as female and you were to treat her as such. It was a refreshingly unambiguous way to share that information, tied directly to the structure of Thai speech.

As to the cabaret, this was my first, so I have no point of comparison. I don’t believe I’ve been to either a drag show or a Vegas-style cabaret. I am, or was, a cabaret virgin. That said, I strongly suspect that this followed a well trod path. It was all lip-syncing to power ballads or overblown diva anthems and outlandish costumes whose headdresses fell a mere pineapple short of ridiculous.

I’m sharing my seat because it was actually central to the experience. Who knew that they’d be doing crowd work, and that my aisle seat put me in the splash zone? Dorothy must have had an inkling, because when I told her I’d gotten a VIP seat she said that she hoped I didn’t get accidental bottle service. I assured her that they still use the expression Happy Ending here. Although, to be fair, maybe I’d have better luck if I asked for bottle service.

The crowd work involved… shaking hands, a curiously polite and gentle interaction. At the expense, if I’m being honest, of the whole lip-syncing act. Apparently lip-syncing and shaking hands at the same time wasn’t in the union contract. One of the performers, as she reached to shake my hand, endearingly clutched her costume as if her nonexistent breasts might spill out when she leaned over. That’s some charming commitment to the bit.

They had one Divine-scaled performer, who lip-synced to one of the only songs I recognized, When You’re Good To Mama from Chicago. She totally deked me, though, when she came in for the handshake. She reached for my hand, then grabbed my head and smothered me, in a modestly non-consensual way (I think, like an airport, my presence represented implied consent), in whatever she was using to create her substantial bosom. When I broke the surface she presented her cheek for a kiss and turned her head at the last minute to plant one right on my lips. I didn’t realize until I wiped my mouth at dinner afterwards that I’d been sporting a substantial dollop of bright red lipstick on my lips. I’m sure everyone else at the restaurant was amused.

As mentioned, the songs were almost completely unknown to me, largely because many were clearly local bangers. Then I realized that while photography might be forbidden, no one said I couldn’t use Shazam. Songs included: The Show Isn’t Over, by La Voix, This Is Me, from The Greatest Showman, Get Sexy by The Sugababes, It’s A Beautiful Day by Sarah Brightman, Butterflies by Kamaliya, and Bole Chudiyan from Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham (a Bollywood musical). Who even are these people? I didn’t even bother Shazaming the songs in Thai.

The performance differed from a Ru Paul jam largely because of the song choices, although there were definitely more apsara hands than I think is normal in Western drag shows. The show ran an hour and ten minutes, and I have no idea if that’s generous or mingy compared to the norm. Sadly, it seemed modestly attended, on a random Thursday night. In a theater with 104 seats there were about thirty, maybe forty tops, in attendance.

But that didn’t stop our plucky crew from lip-syncing their little hearts out. Afterwards, they lined up in a gauntlet to pose for tips. I didn’t pose with them (I think I was still recovering from my near-drowning) but I snapped a few shots of the lovelies on my way out. Proof, because I know how you are, that I was really there.