Hey, true, it's an old tradition and also about pride and social status.
When I travel, I always try to get to know locals, I dont really want to spend my time with other tourists (except my friends if I am not alone of course). I dont know why, but the locals usually accept me pretty fast. I try to speak at least some words of their language, smile at them and try to be seen as curious and definitely not one of those arrogant westerners.
At the cock fight, people were busy anyways, some looked at us a bit astonished, but then get back to their "business" pretty fast.