Thai teens trick or treat in the US
By Suwitcha Chaiyong
Photos courtesy of Poonnapa Limmanont
and Janja Rattanajan
Did you know
In Mexico, trick or treat is called calaverita, which is Spanish for “little skull.”
With its fun fancy dress, free candy and spooky jack-o’-lanterns, the annual Halloween festival excites a lot of young people around the world.
Two 18-year-old Thai students — Thammasat University freshman Poonnapa Limmanont (Poon) and Chulalongkorn University freshman Janja Rattanajan (Ja) — had great experiences celebrating Halloween in the US when they were younger. Poon was a 15-year-old exchange student staying with a host family in the city of Niles in Michigan, while the 12-year-old Ja travelled with her parents to visit Grove city in Pennsylvania, where her mother’s former host family lived.
FUN FAIR
Poon and Ja’s Halloween experiences kicked off when they went to buy pumpkins to make their own jack-o’-lanterns. Poon picked up a pumpkin at a supermarket, while Ja went to a famers fair, which was her favourite moment of the festival.
“The fair was very memorable because there were spectacular fancy dress parades, mascot costumes and pumpkins of many different shapes and sizes,” Ja said. “I also saw some cute rabbits there.”
DIY LANTERNS
After getting their pumpkins, the girls set about carving them to make lanterns. Ja had two pumpkins, so she painted one and carved the other with the help of her dad.
Poon used a pumpkin carving stencil to create a nice jack-o’-lantern.
“I paid serious attention to making my jack-o’-lantern,” Poon said. “Before we carved the skin off, we had to hollow out the pumpkin so that we could put a candle inside.”
TRICK OR TREAT
Knocking on neighbours’ doors and asking them for candy, a game known as trick or treat, is one of the most famous Halloween activities. Since kids who trick or treat usually dress up in scary costumes, Poom dressed up as a Thai ghost with a traditional Issan dress, while Ja dressed as Dracula. The girls then wandered around their towns knocking on doors and asking for candy by saying “trick or treat.”
“It was fun. I’d seen trick or treat in movies, so I wanted to try it,” Poon said. “It’s impossible to knock on people’s doors and ask for candy in Thailand, so it was a good opportunity to know what it was like in the US.”
Unfortunately, little Ja didn’t enjoy trick or treat as much as Poon.
“I was shy at that time, so I was uncomfortable around strangers, even though I wanted to get some candy,” Ja said. “I was also afraid of people dressed in scary costumes because some of them looked real! [Laughs.]”
HALLOWEEN HORROR
Ja and Poon both had fun during their Halloween experiences in the US, but unfortunately Poon heard some bad news the next day. Apparently a girl in the neighbourhood where Poon was staying was murdered with poisoned sweets.
“She walked into a bad area and got sweets from teenagers who told her that it would be her last Halloween,” Poon said. “The kid’s mom thought it was a joke, but after eating the candy the girl died in her sleep from poisoning.”
Poon said that luckily the host she was staying with checked all her candy carefully before letting her eat it.
Vocabulary
- jack-o’-lantern (n): a carved pumpkin with a candle placed inside it, usually made for the holiday of Halloween
spectacular (adj): very impressive
mascot (n): an animal, toy, etc. that people believe will bring them bad luck, or that represents an organisation, etc.
DIY (n): an abbreviation of do it yourself, used to refer to the activity of making, repairing or decorating things in the home yourself
stencil (n): a thin piece of metal, plastic or card in which a design cut out of it, that you put onto a surface and paint over so that the design is left on the surface
hollow something out (phrasal v): to take out the insides of something, leaving only the outer part
