Karaoke

Thai people have an irrational love of karaoke. While I don't know if there are as many karaoke bars as massage parlors here, there are certainly a lot of them.

I must confess that I am not a fan of karaoke. I certainly don't want to sing karaoke myself, and listening to others express their inner Whitney Houston is not one of my favorite pass times.

My own voice is hardly melodic. One of the few times that I have sang in public was during my senior class play many years ago. As the villian Judd Fry in the musical Oklahoma, I had one solo song, and a duo with the lead Curly. Roger Heck (interestingly, there were 55 people in my freshman class and two of them were named Roger Heck), who played Curly had a much nicer voice than I. After the show the director told me that during our duo, she slightly turned my microphone down so that his voice would be more prominent.

A lot of the karaoke establishments here are more than just bars; they might be accurately described as a karaoke restaurant. Tim had a dinner for her company employees last night at one such establishment. The place was an outdoor restaurant and bar with a number of private karaoke rooms. Our party was in a room that held about fifty or sixty patrons and sported a large screen TV hooked up to a karaoke system. The wait staff would bring the food and dishes into the main room. As we had the kids with us, we left early and they hadn't started singing yet.

Lest you think that I've not heard the sweet crooning of a number of would be Thai idols, let me assure you that I have. At my brother-in-law's birthday party, at least eight or nine people made their way up to the stage to demonstrate their talents. While some had decent voices, a few of them on par with American Idol contestant William Hung.

My most bizarre karaoke experience came the other morning day when I was out shopping. I stopped by an IT mall to try to find some paper and cartridge for my Kodak printer. At approximately 11:00 a.m., I was walking through the food court when I heard some really bad singing over the speak system. I looked over and saw a small stage in the corner of food court on which a middle age Thai man was singing karaoke while a couple of patrons looked on.

At first I laughed wondering why someone would sing karaoke in a nearly empty food court in the late morning. Then I thought about it, if I ever have the overwhelming compulsion to sing karaoke, I guess I’d rather do it in front of a few people who I might never see again.