Christmas has arrived with a vengeance in Bangkok, Thailand. How do I know? Because there are tens of thousands of tins of Danish butter cookies meant for Christmas gifts that are stacked high in every supermarket in Bangkok. Which leaves me asking, why are Thais obsessed with Danish butter cookies for Christmas, and why do they think we farangs like them as well?
Personally, I’ve nothing against Danish butter cookies, I’m just not likely to ever buy a tin. One of the most boring types of cookie around, there are a hundred other boxes or tins of western food Christmas goodies I’d buy before I’d ever buy a tin of Danish butter cookies. And most of my farang friends in Bangkok agree with me.
Weirdly though, somebody must have told the buyers at Thai supermarkets that Danish butter cookies are the specialty food items to buy for Christmas, as my local Tesco, Tops and Big C are stuffed to the gills with the damn things.
Now, as someone who loves to buy specialty food for Christmas, I’d kill for a box of mince pies, a Christmas pudding, a Cadbury’s selection box, a Battenburg cake, a proper British Christmas fruit cake with hard white icing, or any number of other Christmas food treats. But, no, here in Thailand we’re stuck with tin after tin after tin of Danish butter cookies with a few other gift tins of some of the most boring western Christmas gift food on the planet.
Please, please, please, can I just ask the buyers at every supermarket in Thailand before you place orders for next year’s specialty Christmas food for grocery shelves in Bangkok can you please ask a few farangs to help you order what other farangs would actually buy and eat? As most of what you order in almost every Thai supermarket just isn’t what we farangs buy and definitely not what we eat for Christmas — and, honestly, none of my Thai friends eat them either.
Why do you think, at the end of January, you’ll still have thousands of tins of Danish butter cookies left? Because nobody wants them. That’s why.
