Despite a lifelong lack of interest in automobiles, last weekend I found myself at the annual Bangkok International Motor Expo. It was what I expected. Within the mammoth Impact Arena convention center, car nerds gawked at the latest models’ slick sanitized exhibits. An army of polite salespeople were eager to chat you up about their product’s horsepower or financing or whatever. This being Bangkok, pretties could be found leaning against every other vehicle. The whole place had that new car smell.
Car shows are boring if you’re not interested in cars. That was my profound realization after wandering around for 20 minutes. My trip would have been a waste had I not stepped into a back parking lot where the Expo’s delightful idiot brother was hidden from polite society.
This space had been transformed into a bizarre night club made up of a sea of cars each tricked out with neon lights, lasers and absurdly powerful sound systems. The real show, however, wasn’t the noise or the lights, try as they might to compete for your attention. Atop each vehicle was a coyote dancer doing her best to writhe to the beat and seduce the audience. It was a monument to bad taste, but like a terrible movie, kind of fascinating to watch.
What really left an impression on me were my fellow attendees. These men, and they were all almost exclusively men, roved in dazed packs snapping pictures of the dancers. Their commitment was what was most remarkable. Each man didn’t just want to get the right lighting and composition, they wanted to capture every of the roughly 70 coyotes. To do that they were willing to get close and suffer the brutal wall of noise coming from the speakers. It’s worth noting here that some of the sound systems there produced higher decibel levels than a Boeing 747.
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