Eating at McDonald’s in Thailand: An Absolutely Awful Thinkpiece About Colonialism
(Yet Another)
Don’t you just hate white people?
Well Ronnie McDilly isn’t white, he’s from McDonaldland, and his brother is probably a hamburger.
I arrived at 3:40 AM after cajoling $10.00 US on Venmo from my editor to write an article for Vandal Press on the subject of eating McDonalds at 3:40 AM in Chiang Mai, Thailand. I knew this amount would cover my meal and would leave me with about $4.00 US in change to stuff into my pocket, which would be about enough to buy two to three regular Thai meals from a local street food vendor. Such is the life of a burger influencer.
When I arrived I was the only human being present who was not a member of the McDonald’s staff, thankfully. I prefer not to be seen under such conditions, that is to say, inside of a McDonalds. The less people know about the circumstance of your entering a McDonald’s the better, which is why I’m sure we will all breathe a sigh of relief when the employees are all replaced by warm smiling iPads.
The staff tonight were however perfectly friendly and all of them wore fish sandwich cardboard-advertisement hats, which I guess is like the Burger King crown.
I had just partied with a bunch of very nice Thai people who had brought me to a semi-secret nightclub under a nearby mall hotel. To be honest I had probably at least something to drink. Quite a bit of something. I avoided the cover charge by coming in with them but I had to avoid sleeping with a very aggressive young non-cisgender man who had his hands all over me the entire night. Yes I know exactly how hard it is to be a woman at a bar— just try being a moderately well-dressed young man. Anyway it was a fun night.
I stepped right up and asked for one Big Mac without cheese (a burger reviewer must taste the meat), french fries, a CocaCola, and a McChicken Porridge. I sat down at a long empty table and could hardly contain my excitement.
Some time later my server brought my meal in a takeout bag so I said, “No, I eat here,” although I tried my best to say it in Thai. She brought it back out on a plastic tray complete with the classic paper liner.
I was thirsty after drinking so much alcohol, so I gripped my large sized iced CocaCola and peered into its pitch-colored darkness.
You’ve had it before. Coke is pure black bubble water. It tastes sweet and evil and you know it is death, presumably like kissing Princess Leia or a beautiful FBI agent. I gulped it down giddily.
The next situation needed to happen fast, because the french fries were hot, ready, and waiting to be consumed. But first I had to handle the ketchup situation.
Yes, it’s more complicated here than you may realize. The chili sauce is orange, not spicy at all, and in my opinion not particularly exceptional. The only use for it might be if you run out of BBQ-sauce with your chicken nuggets. That is a dire and unideal situation. I will understand you if I see it happening.
But please allow me to attempt to explain the difference between “TOMATO” and “AMERICAN KETCHUP,” an almost unfathomable circumstance to encounter on the wrong side of the morning. AMERICAN KETCHUP is salty and tangy and tastes like the kind you like from Heinz. In the photo below you can see I have dunked my middle finger into it to demonstrate the color differential. This is the superior sauce for the purpose. The TOMATO sauce however, tastes incredibly similar to the ketchup but is more bland, thin, and less salty. It is slightly tangier but completely inferior to my American tongue-buds. I do not think Thai people like salt or savory flavor. Herr Heinz and his ketchup may be the greatest thing to ever come out of the land of the Rhine, and I suppose this is the part of the article where we could expound upon the many benefits of international colonial-capitalist expansion, because where has it been better expressed than the universality of the red-tipped fry-stick?
We have at least finally justified the title of our article.
Now the fry, the thing you always taste first. Here they taste like they do at home. Exactly one-hundred-percent the same. It’s a kind of a miracle, you really have to admit. Suddenly I’m transported to the halcyon days of my childhood obesity.
If you take away anything from this article at all, please do not squirge out the “TOMATO” sauce and instead please do opt for the “AMERICAN KETCHUP.”
Next was the McDonalds signature product, the Big Mac, the flagship of the line of McDonald’s fleet of carb-wrapped meat slices. Inside we’re talking two thin meat patties separated by thin flecks of lettuce and onion and a big hunk of bun. But I saw immediately that it was prepared too dry for my tastes, so back to the sauce station for that good old AMERICAN KETCHUP.
Here’s the money baby. The main event.
Wow, delicious delicious thin little patties wedged between buns and soaked and dunked into classic AMERICAN KETCHUP, just like mamma used to buy.
Wow, and before you know it, the whole thing is gone. Was it good? Was it bad? No.
That meant it was time for that porridge!
The porridge is really a beautiful dish. Delicious. Just porridge with flecks of chicken, parsley, and cilantro. It’s soft and warm and reminds me of what home cooking could have been like had I experienced it. It’s pure and white and has a tasty pearly-teeth bleach color that shines under the fried shredded chicken bits.
Do we have this in America? Maybe McPorridge exists in the South. It’s possible.
And now it was time to stumble home, feeling gross, fat, and completely stuffed. It was time to fight what would be a long and painful hangover.
“Goodbye Ronald, goodnight, goodnight.”
Ronald gave me the “corporate wai,” that is, his wai was not too high, not too low. He is after all, a billionaire.
