“Marveling at its grotesque gigantism doesn’t make this two-and-a-half-hour-long movie any less dull.” Dana Stevens, Slate

“In the future, maybe Bay should abandon using a screenwriter altogether and just fill up 90 minutes with disconnected images of robo-carnage.” James Berardinelli, Reelviews

“Being able to go to the movies and not think is fine—but that’s different from going to a movie that assumes you can’t think.” Stephen Whitty, Newark Star-Ledger

“There’s no doubt it could have been much worse. It could have been Transformers 2.” Henry Fitzherbert, Daily Express

“Mindless escapist fare designed with the attention-deficit millennials in mind.” Kam Williams, Newsblaze

1. Exfoliate your lips by giving them a little scrub with sugar or salt. You can also softly brush them with a toothbrush on a daily basis.

2. Apply a thin coat of lip balm and let it sink in for 3-5 minutes.

3. boost up your lipstick application, apply the color by starting from the middle, then moving outwards towards the corner of your mouth. For tidier shape lines, using a lip liner and lip brush works great.

Essentials

Burt’s Bees. G/F, Emporium, 083-300-2554
Kiehl’s. 1/F, Siam Paragon, 02-610-7680
Pesachakorn. Pharmacies nationwide
Vaseline. Tops Market, www.tops.co.th

In the past couple of years, new restaurants with women at the helm have been on the rise. Triplets, Fat Fish and, most recently, Garden of Dream, come to mind right away. All three are women-owned and have women as chefs. And yet, we have a hard time remembering the last time we ate at a hotel restaurant in Bangkok (and really, any restaurant, with a few exceptions) where women held significant power. While in the home, cooking remains largely a woman’s domain, in professional kitchens, the opposite tends to be true. Here, we speak to women chefs and restaurateurs we admire, to find out what it took to get here, and the triumphs and trials along the way.

The First Obstacle

Watching Chef Supatra “Suu” Kanitchapong work in her compact and efficient kitchen at Gastro 1/6, poaching eggs and setting Spanish tortillas in the oven, you’d never guess that she was ever anything but a chef. But her previous life was quite different. “I worked at my family’s shipping business for six years. I hated it. It just wasn’t me.” Her long-time colleague, co-owner of Bo.Lan, Duangporn “Bo” Songvisava, too, wanted to be in the kitchen from the very start. But, she says, “Thai society says you need a degree, so I studied arts at Silapakorn, even though I didn’t see the point.”

Spice Market’s Chef Supanat “Ann” Khanarak’s parents couldn’t believe that she wanted to be a chef. “I should not be cooking,” she remembers. “My family wanted me to be a lawyer or an architect.”

Then again, whereas some conservative ideas delayed our chefs from reaching for their dreams, other patriarchal legacies actually helped. Chef Ranitar “Gee” Charitkul, who was at the helm of two restaurants in New Zealand before returning to Thailand and becoming owner and chef at the new Garden of Dream, picked up her skills precisely because she was a woman. She says, “I never had formal training, but I grew up in a Chinese family, and my grandfather didn’t like women much. So I spent a lot of time out of the way, in the kitchen.”

From School to Kitchen

Despite family opposition, which affects aspiring male chefs as well, and despite the general impression that the kitchen is a woman’s domain, in the professional realm, the scales become drastically imbalanced. In Bangkok’s major hotels, the Executive Chefs, those in charge of food and beverage for all the restaurants dining outlets, are invariably male. In some rare circumstances, the Executive Sous Chef, in charge of an individual dining outlet, is a woman, as in the case of Kempinksi’s Sra Bua and Four Seasons’ Spice Market and Madison. We asked our interviewees who don’t work at hotels why that was the case.

“When I first got back, I applied to a lot of hotel jobs,” says Gee, whose winery restaurant Belmont Square in Blenheim, NZ, was lauded by local magazines. “But I never got any replies. Maybe it’s because they require a certificate.”

Shirley Tangkarawakun and Saranya “Pook” Makinson of Fat Fish, though, voluntarily pulled themselves out of the hotel restaurant scene. Pook says, “We did a few weeks’ training at Dusit Thani. We thought about applying, but we knew it was going to be really hard. The kitchen is hard, and it’s long hours of standing. You have to be young.”

Curious to know when the disparity starts, we asked them about their experience at the traditional culinary program at Le Cordon Bleu Bangkok, where they started out with several women in their class. “In the end, it was just the two of us,” Pook says. “The whole class was 45 people, and it looked like there were only ten boys left, but by the final term, it was [the ten boys] and the two of us. It’s mainly the stress and pressure than mainly a lot of women cannot handle. And if they can, there are also family issues. They would rather have a home than work late nights, late hours.”

Leadership in the Kitchen

Women getting their foot in the door of a professional kitchen is one thing. Working their way up to the top is a long, difficult journey. Anyone who has read Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential has the impression that the professional kitchen is an ultra-macho place, where the cooks are tattooed convicts swearing and beating each other up in between making your sandwich. Suu even worked in a kitchen where two men once had a knife fight because one of them was late. Bo says, “Working your way up, you have to look tough and be loud. If you don’t do that, then people won’t respect you because it’s such a male-dominated industry.”

Pook remembers how one of her female kitchen staff found it very tough when the restaurant first opened. “She cried every day. Everytime she made a mistake, the guy in charge screamed at her.” Social dynamics aside, sometimes, there are also physical limitations. Bo says, “The obstacle I had to get over was carrying a big pot of charcoal or pouring a big drum of oil into the deep fryer,” she says. “People are like, ‘Well you get paid the same amount as me, why do I have to do your work?’”

On the other hand even though Chef Anne’s Sra Bua kitchen has only four women out of a staff of eleven, everyone is treated the same. She says, “In my kitchen, I rotate the people every three months. I want the people to learn everything, not like guys can only work in the hot line and girls only desserts.”

Being Successful

Clearly, it takes a lot of resilience for a woman to become successful in the business. Whether the particular kitchen is brash and freewheeling, or calm and cooperative, consistency and confidence are qualities all our interviewees agree on. “If anyone would like to become a chef, you have to be proud and trust yourself,” says Chef Ann. “If you trust yourself then you can do it.”
For full interviews, visit http://tinyurl.com/5wkp4rw

Essentials

Duangporn “Bo” Songvisava. Bo.lan, 42 Soi Phichaironnarong, Sukhumvit Soi 26, 02-260-2962
Pavita “Anne” Saechao. Sra Bua by Kiin Kiin, Siam Kempinki, 991/9 Rama I Rd., 02-126-9000
Supatra “Suu” Kanitchapong. Gastro 1/6, RMA Institute, Soi Namthip 2, Sukhumvit Soi 22, 080-603-6421
Anchalee Pornrungsit. Madison, 155 Four Seasons Hotel, Ratchadamri Rd., 02-126-8866
Supanat “Ann” Khanarak. Spice Market, 155 Four Seasons Hotel, Ratchadamri Rd., 02-126-8866
Saranya “Pook” Makinson and Shirley Tangkaravakun. Fat Fish, Sukhumvit Soi 31, 02-261-2056
Ranitar “Gee” Charitkul. Garden of Dream, 4/F, Opposite, Sukhumvit Soi 51, 02-662-5057

We’re in a cab on the way to meet Chuvit Kamolvisit and his entourage somewhere in Din Daeng. They’re launching a new website (www.chuvitonline.com) to help get the former massage parlor kingpin’s anti-corruption message across to voters. We’re simply relieved to be able to follow him. A slip down a hill in Nakhon Si Thammarat a few days before left him hospitalized with a bad back and put a brake on his energetic campaigning. 

On the drive across town we tell our cab driver who we’re going to see and ask him what he thinks about the larger-than-life character. “Chuvit stands for repentance,” muses Palangkul Rahotarn. “Considering his past, he’s now become a better person.” Would he vote for him though? “Possibly. I like him. He’s straightforward.”
Repentance and straightforwardness are traits Chuvit has played off ever since he blew the whistle on corrupt police back in 2003 and entered the media spotlight. He’s still a big draw, as we realize when we spot the ranks of cameras outside the Internet cafe where the press con is taking place. We call Thepthat Boonpattananon, or Aum, one of Chuvit’s loyal army of assistants, to find out where to go. The candidate is doing a quick walk about up the street and is surrounded by a good-natured mob of supporters, journalists and students keen to get their photo taken with him.

Chuvit seems in buoyant spirits with little sign of the injury, taking time to stop and chat to store owners before dashing to pose for photos, always happy to pull the trademark grimace that has made his posters so popular. Eventually he’s steered over to the cafe and the waiting reporters. A quick demonstration of how the site works and a few sound bites and the press con is over. While most of the reporters head to lunch, Chuvit does an interview with a TV reporter from China News wanting his thoughts on the election. He’s also been contacted by NHK and has an interview with Agence France Press on the next day at 2pm. Aum, who is responsible for getting the press to follow him shows us a thick notebook that’s filled with scribbled meetings, numbers and contacts. He admits his candidate’s reputation helps. “It’s easy to get people to follow him because of who he is.”

While Chuvit continues his interview we are busy trying to persuade Khun Ke, another assistant, to give us a few minutes of his time. She’s pretty reluctant: “With his injuries and all, maybe we can schedule another time?” After promises that we won’t keep him long and that we’re happy to do it over lunch, she finally relents, ushering us to the nearest khao man gai restaurant.

After helping clear a table we finally find ourselves sitting down for some uninterrupted time with the man himself. He’s remarkably relaxed in these relatively lowly settings and, perhaps more surprisingly, equally at ease switching between Thai and English, a legacy of his time studying in the US. For the most part, the conversation is focused on the election. Why is he running for office again after two failed attempts at becoming Bangkok Governor and a brief stint as an MP (he was thrown out of parliament over a technicality relating to his membership in the Chart Thai Party)?

“Because I watch TV and read the newspapers and I laugh. I think I’m living in a comedy. Thai politicians act like Thai people are very stupid. They don’t do things for the Thai people. They just monopolize everything and take all the money for themselves.” His aims, he says, are rather different. He wants to make a difference, or, as he puts it, he wants “to be a pain in the ass,” for the existing order. Of course his distrust of existing politicians is a line we’ve heard before, but as the head of a party with just 11 nominated candidates, does he really think he can bring about any major changes? “I don’t want to be on the executive. I want to be the opposition. I want to be the public eye in parliament, and use the media to tell people what’s really going on.”

As for his rather unusual campaign posters, he says, “I deliberately take this negative approach, this angry face in my posters. I am not an actor, an artist or even a politician. I want to show society that I am different.”

He also thinks it’s an essential tactic for a party like his, one operating on a very small budget. “I can’t reach millions of people by campaigning on the streets for 45 days but I can tell millions of people about society’s problems with a website, and through my posters,” he continues.

When asked about his opinion on the outcome of the elections he demonstrates his trademark honesty: “Thais aren’t very educated about politics, so it’s easy to attract them to vote for you. Every politician, every party is promising populist policies, but the government will end up bankrupt soon. I think Pheu Thai will get in because they have the political machine, they have the majority. But they’ll have to compromise because of Thai society. There are so many groups that have power outside of government.”

“If you don’t compromise in politics, then you get a war. Last year no one would compromise. But now, I think there will be a compromise.”

It’s clear from the anxious expressions on the assistants’ faces that we’re talking for too long and they clearly want to get him back to the office. But as he finishes his soup we do have chance to ask him why he bothers. If he believes the politicians are all looking after each other, why spend days pounding the streets and spending millions of baht just for an outside chance of getting into government?

“Sometimes I don’t know,” is his frank response. “This is the fourth time I’ve run a campaign and if I don’t get in, well I’ve wasted another B100 million.”
“Maybe I should just buy a yacht, a Rolls Royce or go and blow the money on a trip to Europe. After all, I can’t change the whole world. I’m no superman,” he admits. It’s then, just as the assistants swoop in to clear away the bowls that we perhaps get a glimpse of the real reason he’s running.

“I just want people to remember me,” he says before standing and heading off for some final photos with a crowd of young students who’ve been waiting patiently.
A silver van with a big number five on the side pulls up and Chuvit and Ke jump in. We decide to take a look at the campaign HQ, set in a beautiful old Thai house at the back of Chuvit Gardens. The small group of friends and family that make up his team are sitting out on the veranda having a smoke and chatting, while Khun Ke and Aum hit the phones and Chuvit takes it easy inside. A white board in the corner shows the plan of action for every one of the campaign’s 45 days while photo boards show where Chuvit’s already been. According to the schedule, he supposed to hit a market later, but his bad back is clearly catching up with him, and the outing is cancelled, ending our day on the campaign trail.

It’s all been a little manic, and far too brief, but at least we got to spend some time with him. He’s clearly very clever and very different from the slightly jokey persona he presents to the world and, we have to admit, we can’t help liking him. He’ll need over 250,000 votes to get a place in parliament but, whether he achieves it or not, we do think he’ll succeed in his real aim: people certainly won’t forget Chuvit Kamolvisit. Nick Measures with Natthanun Prasongchaikul