A Little Bit Magical

Yesterday evening, we all enjoyed our second Bangkok Street Show. Wandering around Lumpini Park, we stopped at various tape marked "stages" and were treated to the goofy, the amazing, and the magical. A good live show is all about the performers personality and stage presence. Many of these people must have been "class clowns." Now they get to travel the world, entertaining people from various cultures, "playing" for a living.

Philip's all around favorite was the acrobat troupe. No props, just brawn and discipline. Flips, flying, feats of balance. His award for pure entertainment went to Katay Santos from Venezuela. His tricks weren't the most eye catching, but he kept up a good banter with the crowd, drawing us in and making us laugh. His finale of doing a handstand on top of a stack of four chairs had Meriel holding her breath.


My heart went out to a young Chinese woman. Sequins falling off her costume, her tricks weren't dazzling but created from pure hard work and determination. She performed some interesting acts of contortion. Then she began to balance objects on the bridge of her nose, face upturned. She set up a plastic table "leg," then a table top, four small wine glasses, another top. Finally she had three tiers with vase of flowers on top. She climbed a set of stairs, balanced on a rocking platform, scaled a few rungs of a pair of ladders, and managed to get back down to the ground. She must have been balancing all of that on her face for more than 5 minutes.

The Japanese Juggler had all the kids watching wide eyed. Using sleight of hand and optical illusion, he made fixed wooden circles spin and rotate. He was also quite good with the Chinese yo-yo. He was able to get three yo-yos whirling around and around, hopping from one string to another, then flying into the air. The crowd gasped as he sent a small yo-yo high over the tops of the trees, managing to catch it just before it escaped into the audience.

The grand finale for our little family came in the form of a thin, gray-haired Japanese man carrying an umbrella with a bubble machine perched atop. As he stepped through the deepening twilight, his big smile and bright eyes had the audience warming to him immediately. The stage lights glinted on the bubbles, causing Hollis to exclaim, "They are rainbow bubbles!" Masashi Okuda caught bubbles and stored them in his top hat, releasing them later with a flourish. He created larger and larger bubbles, then tiny and even tinier bubbles, a sprinkling of fairy dust. Bubbles within bubbles, caterpillar and cluster bubbles floated up into the sky. From a small flask, he sucked some kind of gas into his mouth and blew it into the bubbles. These opaque bubbles sparkled and hovered before bursting in a puff of smoke. After the show, our little family walked through the evening, filled with pleasure and a little bit of magic.