Wearing a “#1 Dad” T-blouse, Ram Malhotra adjusted his stance slightly as he stood on a level set up within the Carroll Creek Linear Park arena on Sunday, facing off in opposition to a Muay Thai kickboxing instructor.
As the announcer gave the all-clean, Malhotra swayed ahead and pivoted at his hips, aiming a powerful kick proper into the training pad held by the teacher, inflicting the martial artist to step lower back with a surprised grunt. It became clear Malhotra changed into hitting his stride with some extra kicks in, eliciting an impressed statement from the announcer and drawing cheers from his wife and children looking inside the crowd of spectators at Frederick’s first actual Thai New Year’s Water Festival.
“Wow, that is astounding!” The announcer yelled after the display before scrutinizing the smiling Muay Thai instructor. “Someone get him a Tylenol!”
Sitting backpedal with his circle of relatives, Malhotra took a few minutes to reward the pageant as the correct Father’s Day interest.
“We heard about it on Facebook; my spouse planned this out and said, ‘Let’s do that for Father’s Day,’ and it’s been a lot of amusing for everybody. However, I’ll admit I didn’t assume I’d grow to be doing that!” Malhotra said, gesturing again to the degree to which the kickboxing trainer had reduced the pad to permit a young woman to get in a few tentative kicks.
While Malhotra, a 44-year-old from Rockville, hasn’t practiced a fight martial artwork because he was skilled in Hung Fut Kung Fu in high college, he currently takes aerobic kickboxing lessons to stay in shape.
“I guess that helped,” he said with a smile.
Elsewhere on the pageant, which spanned the creek from South Market Street to the theater, Gurpreet Kaur, the president of the Board of Directors for the Asian American Center of Frederick, said the event changed into planned to be simply the family-pleasant revel in that Malhotra defined.
“It’s our first time here in Frederick having this festival,” Kaur said at the AACF’s tent near South Market Street, explaining how the owners of Sumitra Thai Cuisine came up with the idea to have a good time with the conventional water competition that rings within the New Year in Thailand. “… They commonly do this competition in April; however, because the climate here is quite bloodless, we chose to keep it in June.”
Along with the kickboxing demonstrations, traditional Thai dances, tunes, and a style display occupied the center degree at distinct instances throughout the competition, which commenced Saturday and persevered Sunday. Different providers, both local and from out-of-country, coated the creek in the course of the competition’s run, promoting everything from handmade garb to toys and traditional Thai meals, like Khanom being, a traditional Thai dessert, as well as bird skewers and pad Thai stir-fry noodles and rice.
For many neighborhoods and out—of—state businesses, the festival was a welcome boon for the early summer season.
Even late within the final day of the competition on Sunday, lengthy traces fashioned outside several of the meal tents as advantageous reviews unfold through phrase-of-mouth among competition-goers. As buyers covered up along the creek, Von Sokkor grinned fortunately as his son, Sunny Sokkor, worked on a sparkling batch of pad thai noodles in a large dish over a fuel-fueled burner.
“We drove -and-a-half hours, all the way up from Colonial Beach, Virginia, to be right here for the pageant,” Von Sokkor said, explaining how his enterprise, Suki Cuisine, had learned approximately the festival through a chum who volunteers with the Asian American Center of Frederick. “It’s the first time we came here [to Frederick], and it’s very nice; I suppose we will be back quickly.”
And if the companies go back for the pageant subsequent year, just like the Asian American Center of Frederick hopes they’ll, they’ll possibly no longer want new customers.
Back at the primary degree, forty-12 months-antique Araman Adams, who drove to Frederick from Hagerstown along with his family to attend the pageant, stated he could probably be back to Frederick a lot quicker to spend the $ seventy-five worth of Sumitra present certificate he won in a gamble in the course of the pageant.
“Being retired, I’m a chunk of a food gourmand,” Adams stated with fun. “So, for me, that is an outstanding occasion. I’m simply glad I stepped far from the family for a little bit to buy some lottery tickets!”
