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Photo: The Thai wai What's On This Page?
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Thailand - Culture Page 4Last updated: 19th January 2008
Children should not be wai'ed to. It is considered impolite and unlucky for them. My biggest problem initially was knowing how to respond if someone wai'ed me. I did not want to appear rude by not doing anything but also I did not want to give offense by doing the wrong thing. I have tried to understand what is appropriate by talking with Thai friends. Here are my findings but if anyone reading this knows better I would be grateful for the feedback. If a child wais you as a greeting it is acceptable to hold your hands up in a wai position in front of your chest (which isn't considered a proper wai) but don't raise them in front of your face as this is a wai. Thai children are taught from the cradle to be polite and respectful to adults so they will always wai you. If the parents appear after the child they will ask the child, "Sawatdii reu yung?" which means have they greeted you yet. The greeting will include a wai as they speak. If a child wais you as an expression of gratitude, for instance if you have given them a present or some money, and says khawp khun khrup or khawp khun kha it is not necessary to do anything. Just say, "mai pen rai", which means 'never mind or 'you're welcome'. Incidentally, if a child gives you something it is not appropriate to say khawp khun khrup or khawp khun kha. Khawp jai should be used when thanking a child. With adults the wai'ing is based on age and social hierarchy, as discussed previously. I have been told that if a younger person wais me I should not wai back but if an older person wais I should. I have major difficulty assessing a Thais age by visual appearance so don't know half the time if they are older or younger. If they are younger but I think they are older that could be rude. I think also that if a younger person who has an important position in society wais then I should wai back as their position 'pulls rank' on age. As I said, it can be complex. Like bowing in Japanese culture where deeper bows are more respectful and more important people get a deeper bow, the same applies with wai'ing in Thailand. If you decide therefore that you will wai to people you have to understand what type of wai is appropriate. Many foreigners get it completely wrong and after living in Thailand for a while it is acutely embarrassing watching their antics as they wai everyone they come into contact with. Many years ago an old friend of mine went travelling in Australia and started to speak with an affected Australian accent the minute he had landed on Australian soil. It sounded ridiculous. A girl I met in Thailand who was teaching English used to greet everyone, including me, with a ridiculously insincere khawp khun Khaaaaaaaaaa and an extremely deep wai. I just thought she looked stupid and I'm sure the Thais did too but of course they would never said anything. I don't like trying to adopt cultural behaviours that are not part of my culture because (as these two examples show) it can look stupid. For a long time in Thailand I didn't make any attempt to wai properly because I am not a Thai. Sometimes I would just raise my hands together in front of my chest as a token gesture. After living for more than two years in Thailand I was taken to task about this by some of my students who always wai'ed me after a lesson. I had got to know them well and we had got past the greng jai stage so they weren't afraid of hurting my feelings. They told me that my wai wasn't beautiful (mai su-waay). The obsession with beauty in Thailand is such that anything considered mai su-waay is definitely not good. I asked them for some wai'ing lessons and they obliged. It is done very slowly, gracefully and respectfully. Don't smile, just look respectful. For a normal wai the tips of the index fingers just touch the nose and there is a slight bending of the back. My wai'ing style met with approval with my students and then I started to get more approval from other Thais as a result of a better wai. Instead of mai su-waay it is now su-waay. More respectful wais are reserved for important people in society and special occasions. The hands come higher so that the fingers reach to about eyebrow level and the bow is slightly deeper. The photo at the top of the page taken at a wedding is quite a good example showing a guest wai'ing the bride's mother. For extremely special people, such as monks, the hands go very high with the thumbs going up to the bridge of the nose. It's an important part of a powerful culture so although I didn't give it much thought at first, it means a lot to the Thais. It's probably the same as I feel about a good, firm handshake rather than a weak, limp-wristed affair. Once you get comfortable with wai'ing don't start wai'ing everyone, as the girl I mentioned above did. I have wai'ed inappropriately at times and it has been met with a slightly uncomfortable, embarrassed look. As a tourist you don't have to worry. At better hotels and restaurants the staff will wai you and a polite, respectful nod of your head is all that is needed or you can return the wai if you feel comfortable doing so. The Thai need for returning a wai is very powerful. I once wai'ed a friend who was driving a car and both hands came off the steering wheel as he was turning a corner to wai back. It can be amusing watching them trying to wai if they have their hands full but they will try their best.
Buddhism teaches the theory of rebirth. Buddhists believe that our minds carry on after death, that once we die our mind leaves its current body and implants itself in the fertilised egg of a new life just about to begin. This process continues ad-infinitum and only stops once craving and ignorance end, that is, when a state of Nirvana has been reached. Depending on how we have lived our life, this will affect the next life we lead. This would be roughly equivalent to the Christian concept of heaven and hell but at least with Buddhism you get a chance in every new life to make amends and improve your lot for the next life. A good way to regulate any society is to have a notion of inescapable judgment on people's lives. In Christianity if you are a good person you go to heaven and if you are a bad person you go to hell (and don't think you won't be found out because there is an omnipotent God watching your every move). In Buddhism how you behave in this life will affect your next rebirth, for example, if you are mean and miserly with money you come back in the realm of hungry ghosts and you will have neurotic cravings that can't be satisfied. For Thai Buddhists (the majority of the population) making merit is important in order to ensure a good rebirth next time around. Giving alms to monks, donations to temples and helping less fortunate people helps to achieve this but so do other acts of kindness and it promotes a more caring and less greedy society.
The business of business all around the world is making money, of course. However, in Thailand there doesn't seem to much else involved, apart from making money. The objective is to sell goods and services for as much as possible and to keep costs to an absolute minimum in order to maximise profit. It's a simple business model but, in true Thai fashion, quite shortsighted. The following anecdotes explain something about the Thai way of thinking. I was looking around for a language school to give me some lessons in Thai. One place quoted me Bt6,000 for 20 hours but it was a bit out of the way. Directly opposite where I was staying at the time was another school and the location was perfect, just 20 yards away. When I first asked them to quote me they said Bt12,000. It sounded a bit steep after being quoted half that amount. I said it was expensive and that I had received a lower quote. They asked how much. When I told them, their price immediately went down to Bt6,000 with no hesitation. It was obviously still profitable business otherwise they wouldn't have been interested, so what about the first quote? They were just trying it on to see how much they could get away with and farangs always get a high quote because they are perceived by Thais to be infinitely wealthy. In a free market society and using the maxim that something is only worth what someone else will pay for it, there is nothing inherently wrong with this approach and if they can find a stupid farang who will just hand over the money, good luck to them. There is no shortage of stupid farangs in Thailand. However, if you don't want to be ripped off it is something to bear in mind and it doesn't matter what is being a sold whether it is some language lessons, a tuk-tuk ride or a silk shirt. It so happened that the same school gave me some work later. The first thing to note (and I have mentioned this elsewhere) is that although they advertise what a fantastic school they are they didn't check me out at all before I started teaching. I am a qualified TEFL teacher and very conscientious about my work but they didn't know that. As an employee, as opposed to being a customer, the money situation was a little different this time. Their objective was now to pay me as little as possible. I had a minimum hourly figure in mind and was hoping to exceed this but because of their stinginess it actually proved difficult to achieve my minimum hourly rate. I was asked to teach a group of adults who all worked for the same company and I imagine the difference between what the school charged the students and what they paid me resulted in a tidy profit. My students turned out to be a nice bunch, as most Thai students are. They worked for quite a large cleaning company. One of the girls dealt with complaints and asked me to give her some help replying to e-mails. What I then heard was fairly typical of Thailand. Once I had stopped laughing after reading an e-mail one customer had sent complaining about two scrubbers the company had sent, I started to give the situation some serious thought. There were a number of complaints about understaffing on cleaning contracts. Typically, the contract had stated that 10 people would be supplied but the company had sent only two. This is the old business of image and face and promising a hell of a lot but not delivering. The language schools do it with their advertising and apparently some Thai companies even do it in contracts which is a tad riskier. She asked me what she could say about this problem in her e-mail replies. I was a bit stumped at first. If the contract had specified 10 people but they got just two they had a right to be unhappy. She told me she was trying to employ more staff in which case I suggested she apologise but inform the customer that more people were being recruited in an effort to placate them. She went on two tell me that there is a very high turnover rate. As fast as people are recruited, others resign. Perhaps they only work for two weeks. I found out that the top managers in the company are foreigners and do very nicely, thank you, but the cleaners doing the actual cleaning work are paid minimum wage, that is, Bt139 a day. You can hardly blame them for their lack of loyalty to the company being paid such a pittance. I suggested that if the company paid them a little more they might stick around longer which would lower the turnover rate and help to prevent future complaints. She said that was not company policy. I felt quite sorry for her being stuck in the middle where she was having to deal with all the complaints but was powerless to change anything. This demonstrates a couple more things about Thai business culture. The first is how Thais at the bottom end of society are so badly exploited. Many Thais doing manual work are treated almost like slaves and paid peanuts. The second point illustrates the legendary Thai inability to think ahead a little. The company had major problems with customer satisfaction but weren't doing anything to fix the real problem. They were trying to recruit to ease the manpower problems (the current problem) but not doing anything to make people want to stay working there. Unless they fix the underlying problem, the turnover rate will remain high and employees will continue to leave as fast as they can recruit new people. Immediately she started talking to me about the problems I could tell that my way of thinking to solve the problem was different. It's a bit like having a leaky roof. The problem the Thais would want to fix is how they can get more buckets whereas someone else might be thinking what they could do to stop the leak. The concept of making false economies does not seem to exist in Thailand. Doing everything for the lowest possible amount of money does not always pay but such is the obsession with money they are reluctant to change. In the example described above the company could probably fix their problem by giving the staff a very small raise. Instead of paying them the government agreed minimum wage, increasing this by just a few Baht might make all the difference.
But walk into an American fast-food chain in Thailand and you will find that the service is exceptional and far exceeds levels of service for the same restaurant chain elsewhere. MacDonalds staff in Thailand aren't the stereotypical surly burger-flippers you expect to find at MacDonalds in the Western world. They are polite, efficient and very helpful. Most of them probably have university degrees. Returning to the theme of bad service, I was a little annoyed that after taking out health insurance I went to the nearest hospital for a tummy problem and was told that there was a problem with my insurance cover. This, it turns out, was actually a complete lie. They hadn't bothered to call the insurance company to check because presumably it was too much effort in the early hours of the morning. To avoid the risk of not getting paid they told me I would have to pay cash. This created work for me as I then had to contact the insurance company myself to get the money reimbursed. It also raised the question of what might have happened if I'd needed urgent attention and didn't have much cash on me. However, getting back to good service again, when I contacted the insurance company they were most helpful. It's unusual to see Thais getting worked up about anything but they really ripped into the hospital. Apparently this particular hospital has a habit of doing the same thing whenever dealing with patients out-of-hours. The guy at the insurance company gave me his personal mobile phone number and told me I could call him any time night or day if I had another problem. This, I considered to be definitely above and beyond the call of duty. The real point here is that people will have different opinions about customer service based on what they have experienced personally but it is impossible to make sweeping generalisations.
Time, Punctuality and Vagueness
This irritates me at times but is perfectly acceptable to the Thais. If you arrange to meet a Thai they might tell you, "sometime after 7pm" ("neung thum gwaa"). If you are teaching English and the class begins at 5pm expect students to still be arriving at 5:30pm. Gwaa isn't just used for time but also for age. This kind of works in my favour as I am now officially, "saam sip gwaa," or in English, "over 30." It's not always an ideal answer though when you want to know someone's age and they just tell you, "yee sip gwaa." Back in my old life, time was a precious commodity. Many people in the Western world are quite secure financially but they work too much so don't have a lot of time to do things outside of work. Conversely, not an insignificant amount of Thais appear to have a lot of time on their hands. They therefore don't seem to understand the value of time as perceived by Westerners. Making appointments in Thailand can be infuriating. I have already mentioned tardiness but something else that happens to me a lot is not being informed about cancelled appointments - or being informed 10 minutes before the appointment is scheduled to take place. It goes something like this. I am happily working in my room but have an appointment which may be social, for work or, for example, the dentist. I break off what I am doing, get showered and changed, and leave for the appointment. As I'm almost there my mobile phone rings and I am told the appointment has been cancelled or sometimes I actually get to the venue where I am given the good news. It is then a case of having to travel home again - all nice and sweaty by this time - to resume what I was doing before but I've wasted maybe two hours. I get annoyed but the Thais never seem very apologetic or guilty about having wasted my time. Quite often they have known well in advance and could have told me a lot earlier but didn't bother. This has happened on several occasions when I've been due to teach an English class and not only did I not get an apology but I didn't get paid anything. The Thais aren't by nature rude or inconsiderate. Politeness and consideration for other people are fundamental aspects of the culture. The only explanation I can think of is that time just isn't seen as being a particularly valuable resource in Thailand. Therefore, to waste someone's time is no big deal.
When I first observe behaviour in Thailand that seems strange to me I never conclude straight away that it is cultural. It could be the behaviour of that unique individual. However, after a while spent living in the country I sometimes see strange behaviour repeated often by different people which leads me to believe it is cultural. Why is it that many Thais don't always feel the need to tell people they've arranged to meet if they decide to cancel the arrangement? Some do but a lot don't. I have been on the receiving end a number of times after waiting to meet someone and they don't turn up. When speaking to them afterwards they explain why they couldn't make it but there is never any sense of guilt about not telling me they had decided to cancel. It happens at all levels. When I found out a doctor I had been seeing at a private hospital also ran his own clinic I saw him at the clinic instead as it was a lot cheaper. I told him I would call the hospital to cancel my next appointment as a matter of common courtesy but he told me not to bother. My girlfriend arranged for a tuk-tuk to collect her one morning but then decided she didn't want to go as she was tired. I offered to tell the guy she had changed her mind but she told me not to bother. To me, telling the person you arranged to meet that you can't make it just seems the polite and the decent thing to do. Apparently not to the Thais though, it isn't necessary.
There's No Such Thing As A Free Lunch ... ... unless of course there's been a Chicken Flu epidemic recently.
The aftermath of the 2004 Chicken Flu outbreak amused me mildly. Thais I had spoken to at the height of the problem were telling me how they had stopped eating chicken because of the potential risk. Healthy chickens were being slaughtered to contain the outbreak but nobody wanted them. PM Thaksin had suggested canning it up and sending it to 'poor' countries but that didn't go down too well. Yet another Thaksin gaffe. It didn't send out a very good message that the chicken was deemed too risky for Thais to eat but other people could have it. The government organised a special 'Eat Chicken' day and in towns around the nation street stalls were set up cooking the mountain of chickens that had accumulated. Suddenly, from not wanting to eat chicken, the Thais couldn't get enough of it (the free stuff anyway). It was a feeding frenzy that any self-respecting shark would have been proud of. I went along to see what was happening but couldn't get near any of the food stalls due to crowds of ravenous Thais and I was afraid of being crushed in the stampede. If you want to get rid of absolutely anything (nuclear or toxic waste, anthrax spores) just offer it for free in Thailand.
I have bought Thais I know small gifts - handbags for female friends when I made a trip to Singapore and bits and pieces for kids I know. When the kids showed an interest in drawing and colouring I bought them books, paper, pencils, rubber stamps and ink pads. When they kept playing with my watch and sunglasses I bought them their own. In all cases I received a muted acknowledgement of thanks and then, on future visits, I never saw what I bought them again. With the stuff for the kids the parents were more interested in how much I paid. I don't bother now. Before this I might have bought something for someone if I thought they would appreciate it but no longer. I'm not sure why this is. It may just be the Thai way not to make a fuss about gifts? Possibly when someone gives a gift it is construed as that person doing if for them self in order to make merit and not doing it to benefit the recipient of the gift? It could be that in Thailand words don't mean much. Saying thank you for something is maybe not deemed adequate but instead the favour must be repaid by returning it in an appropriate way. Or maybe the person just didn't like the gift? Perhaps I'll find out one day.
Thais are normally turned out clean and neatly and uniforms figure highly in the national psyche. All students attending school and college wear a uniform. A lot of companies insist on their employees wearing a uniform. It may just be a Polo shirt with the company logo on but everyone will have a uniform appearance. The unspoken Thai social hierarchy regards military personnel as being more important than civilians and uniformed people more important than non-uniformed ones. In many offices the people working there will have official looking photos of themselves hanging on the wall. In these photos they never smile and are often dressed in white uniforms with sashes and medals. I've never actually seen anyone wearing one of these uniforms but the explanation may have been revealed to me while I was waiting for some photos to be developed one time. In the photo processing lab were a small army of Thais on computer screens who were all wizards using Adobe Photoshop. They were busy retouching these official looking photos. In addition to removing stray hairs, spots, skin blemishes and double chins they were cutting and pasting the peoples' heads on to nice white uniforms. I thought the whole thing was a farce but that's Thailand. It's all about image and not substance. What you see is so rarely the reality.
For a Buddhist country where doing good deeds is supposed to be far more important than accumulating material wealth there is an awful lot of importance placed on material things. This is a real shame but it is testimony to the power of advertising and media from the West in order to sell more products. Young Thais are obsessed with mobile phones. Everyone seems to have one and they lust over new models (which they have an in-depth knowledge of). When I arrived in Thailand I bought an old second-hand Nokia model which is fine for me. It would be a major embarrassment to most Thais though, many of whom have phones that cost the equivalent of two or three months wages. Of course, it's all to do with image. In addition to mobile phones cars are the other big 'image' item. It's not quite the same as Singapore where people lust after Ferraris but owning a car in Thailand is important for image and status. Thais, similar to Americans, have a love affair with pickup trucks which I have never quite figured out. Why a utility vehicle should be so desirable is a mystery to me? Want to impress the girls? Well, just go out and buy yourself a new Isuzu D-Max pickup truck with a 'Spacecab'. The king of automobiles in Thailand however is the Mercedes Benz. Recently I met a friend of a friend who had one year old twin boys. The boys' nicknames (all Thais have nicknames) were 'Bee-Em' and 'Benz'. To me that kind of summed up how a lot of Thais think these days. Quite sad really. As the boys' father is Malaysian I thought that 'Pro' and 'Ton' would have been more suitable nicknames but that doesn't quite carry the same cachet.
The meaning is 'never mind' or 'it doesn't matter'. Sometimes I like to think of it roughly having the same meaning as the English proverb about not crying over spilt milk. Something has happened, there is no turning the clock back so there is no point getting upset. Just deal with it. mai pen rai. That's the positive wrap. There are times though when it can be quite frustrating. I mentioned above the 'mai pen rai attitude' and that's what it often is, an attitude. Thais don't always say the words but the look on their face and the slight shoulder shrug often speak louder than the spoken words. Here are a couple of examples I experienced just before writing this. I had been looking for a towel rail and spotted just what I was after on sale in a reputable department store. There was a large display of similar items and a big sign saying 25% off. I checked with the sales assistant and he gave me the original price and the sale price. Great, I'll take it. At the checkout they charged me full price. When I questioned this they told me the brand of towel rail I wanted wasn't on sale so I was being charged full price. They had apparently made a mistake by putting it with the sale items. mai pen rai. I dragged one of the checkout staff over to the sale display but the response was just to start removing certain items. My Western way of thinking told me they couldn't get away with this. They couldn't have something on sale (which was confirmed as being on sale by one of the staff) and just charge me full price at the checkout without saying a word because they then decided they'd made a mistake. That's my Western way of thinking though. In Thailand it's, 'mai pen rai'. The following day I went to pick up some contact lenses I had ordered. The shop had ordered them from Bangkok as there were none in stock when I first asked. Apparently Bangkok didn't have what I wanted either so they sent something that was close but not what I asked for. The lenses were the correct strength but were a different size to what I wanted. When I questioned this I just got a 'mai pen rai' as they continued their requests for me to hand over my money. I'd had my eyes carefully checked and a prescription made out to suit but the attitude in Thailand was that I could use anything in my eyes that was close. mai pen rai.
Last updated: 6th February 2008
A rollercoaster ride might be described as fun in the West and sanook in Thailand. Same thing, but there is more to sanook than just that. In order to understand Thai concepts, it is first necessary to understand the Thai way of life and for the vast majority of Thais life is dull, boring and very monotonous. After living in Thailand for a while, it doesn't take long to realise this as you see the same people doing the same drudge jobs day after day after day. Well, you might say, my life in the West is dull, boring and repetitive. That may be so but people in the West with even the dullest jobs probably get evenings and weekends off. Many Thais don't. And also, most Westerners with even the dullest of jobs can probably afford to take trips during their time off to break the monotony. Most Thais - who earn just enough to exist - can't. And this is where sanook starts to become a very important aspect of Thai life. It is any activity that breaks the monotony of daily life. The example above of a rollercoaster ride would do it but activities that Westerners wouldn't necessarily think of as fun can also be sanook activities for Thais. Any activity that involves breaking the monotony of daily life by going to a different location is known as bpai tiao and once again it is a concept that cannot be directly or easily translated with mere words. I used to think it meant to go travelling but it needn't be that extensive. A trip to the local supermarket half a kilometre away can be classed as bpai tiao. Shortly after I met Iss, she was still working in a beauty salon. She worked seven days a week from 8am until the last customer had gone - sometimes as late as 11pm or midnight. Much of her work was pretty awful, cutting toenails and picking ears being two of the more unenviable tasks she had to perform. At the time, I was doing three-monthly border runs and occasionally I would take her along. To me it was a necessary evil. Minivan trips to a shitty town on the Thai/Malaysian border full of prostitutes just to get a few stamps in my passport were never my idea of fun. However, when I took her it meant she didn't have to sit in a boring salon cutting toenails and cleaning ears. To her it was both bpai tiao and sanook. It has been pointed out by farang authors that funerals in Thailand can be sanook activities. And why not? Thais are very social and like getting together in large groups, especially when there is lots of free food to be had. A funeral means a day away from the daily grind, getting together with lots of people, and eating lots of free food. Of course it's sanook. Why shouldn't it be? This understanding helps to explain a lot of Thai behaviour. Why is it that Thais are so fascinated with TV soap operas and spend hours watching TV? It's an escape from the monotony of daily life. Why do many Thais drive like morons with a deathwish? The excitement of driving a car or motorbike fast is the only excitement they get in their boring lives. Why do lower class Thai men drink so much? The same reason. It is no coincidence that those Thais lower down the social scale watch more TV, drink more, and drive more recklessly. Motorbike and pickup trucks - the vehicles of choice for lower class Thais - are by far the worst culprits on the road. Middle class Thais with more interesting lives do not need to escape boring existences through TV, alcohol, or high speed thrills on motorbikes. sanook (สนุก); sabai (สบาย); bpai tiao (ไปเที่ยว).
For most Thais life is just a game not to be taken too seriously and the play aspect is more important than working or learning. Thailand can probably quote impressive figures for Internet usage or computer skills but take a look inside any Internet shop in Thailand and what do you see? What you will mostly see are people playing interactive, online games such as Ragnarok. You don't find many Thais researching facts on the web, writing web pages or even sending e-mail. I doubt that many know what a spreadsheet is. The school I worked at for a short time organise an 'Academic' day every year. I have put the word academic in quotes deliberately as it was anything but. For about two weeks before this event classes were regularly cancelled as students took time out to prepare for it. The preparations mostly involved making costumes and polystyrene models of famous buildings in London and New York. The day itself was just like a fair or a village fete. Everyone wandered around quite at leisure, eating at the many food stalls that had been set up. There wasn't exactly a lot of academic activity. Of course there were no lessons on the big day and school was interrupted yet again the day after to clear everything up. The whole thing had almost zero academic benefit and wasted days and days of valuable education time. It was only me who saw it this way though. It is seen as a very important event in the school calendar by everyone at the school. Here's another example. My girlfriend was going to hairdressing college and a fancy dress party had been arranged to take place one weekend for her graduation ceremony. I found out that some of her lessons had been cancelled before the party so that everyone could get fitted for their fancy dress costumes and they even arranged a dress rehearsal which meant even more cancelled lessons. It's perfectly normal behaviour in Thailand. Any kind of fun, social event is given priority over working and studying.
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