What's On This Page?

• Buy Today Pay Tomorrow[more]
• Graduation Ceremonies [more]
• Tolerance And Staying Cool [more]
• Giving Strangers The Benefit Of The Doubt And Forgiveness [more]
• Enjoying Life [more]
• Patriotism [more]
• Spirit Houses [more]
• Thai Attitudes Towards Animals [more]
• Boys Who Want To Be Girls [more]

Thailand - Culture Page 5

Buy Today Pay Tomorrow

This Aeon office is one of the biggest, busiest and plushest offices in town. Outside virtually every consumer goods shop in Thailand are signs for companies such as Aeon and EasyCredit offering just that - easy credit.

Buddhism advocates concentrating on the present. This is a very good idea most of the time. We only ever experience existence in the present so spoiling the current moment by dwelling about things that happened in the past, or things that may or may not happen in the future is pointless.

Thais take this advice to heart. They like material things; and they are also susceptible to the advertising that they are constantly bombarded with.

The result is a society obsessed with materialism and huge amounts of consumer debt. The problem for many is that sometimes it does pay to think a little about the future.

Thailand's used car showrooms, of which there are many, are filled with vehicles bought on credit that the owner then had to sell because he/she couldn't keep up with the repayments.

Motorbike showrooms provide intricate details of credit arrangements because that's how they expect customers to finance their purchases. In many cases it only needs a small downpayment to leave the showroom on a brand new motorbike. This temptation is too much for many Thais, even those who can't really afford the repayments.

Yet, despite all this debt, Thailand's economy and the Baht remain strong.

Graduation Ceremonies

Almost every Thai I know has a photo of themself in full graduation robes. They are kept in wallets, and in most Thai homes and shops are large, framed photos of the owner's children.

I thought at first that a lot of Thais must have been through tertiary education and I was quite impressed. Wow, this country is investing a lot in education and is turning out a lot of high-calibre graduates each year. It wasn't until later that the reality started to dawn on me.

Both my girlfriend and another girl I know attended hairdressing school. The girlfriend isn't stupid but she is hardly a Nobel laureate, and the other girl is the same. My girlfriend attended lessons when she felt like it and what she had to learn didn't exactly stretch her academically.

The course lasted a few months and then there was a huge 'graduation' ceremony that took place in the biggest hotel in town.

There's nothing wrong with celebrating the passingof a course but what surprised me is how the Thais do it. They all hired official graduation robes for the day and instead of looking like hairdressers who had been learning to do perms and blow dries for a few months, they looked like they had just completed four years at Cambridge or Harvard.

I am no longer taken in with all the fancy photos I see in Thailand of people in robes and important looking uniforms. It actually means nothing. This is the land of image and appearance, not substance. What you see never reflects the truth.

University students hardly push themselves either but apparently it doesn't take an awful lot of effort to graduate from a Thai university. That way the government figures look good for the amount of graduates being churned out each year. It's hardly surprising that many Thai students who win scholarships abroad find it incredibly tough studying in another country.

I've read a theory (I think it was Mulder) that this obsession with awards is a result of low self-esteem. It's a way to make people with low self-esteem think better of themselves.

It could just be the fact that a significant proportion of the population simply cannot afford university educations. They then turn to other ways to earn the recognition they desire.

Tolerance And Staying Cool

The height of rudeness and bad manners in Thailand is to cause a big scene by getting loud, angry and agitated. At times Thailand can be a frustrating country for foreigners and when this happens it is easy to 'fly off the handle' to release some tension. It doesn't do any good though. You will lose face and the situation won't be helped. Have you also noticed how upsetting this type of behaviour can be to everyone around? That's one of the great things about Thailand, that of a calm and peaceful atmosphere without tension.

One of the major problems in the West these days is 'rage' incidents. The phenomena has always been around but a few years ago the term 'road rage' was coined for people driving cars who have a rage attack and act against someone else. People have actually been murdered because of 'road rage'. After 'road rage' there started to be incidents of 'air rage', 'shopping trolley rage', etc. This doesn't happen in Thailand because of the culture.

I have seen some horrible driving incidents but nobody gets upset. (To be honest I'm not sure if this is just because Thais don't know what is right and what is wrong when they are driving). If someone pushes into a queue nobody complains. Try not to get agitated. If you do the Thais might describe you as 'jai rawn' (hot heart) and you may hear 'jai yen yen' which means calm down.

The Thais are actually too tolerant at times and as a result they get taken advantage of. Selling tickets for long distance buses that are already full is common practice. I have seen it often and been a victim once.

I don't mind standing, or sitting on a plastic stool with no back support, for an hour or two but not for a 12 hour overnight trip to the northeast border of Thailand. However, I have seen just that and not a word is said. In the West, if someone paid for a seat on a bus they would expect a seat and if they were given a plastic stool to sit on they would be furious.

On minivans too the drivers will keep stopping to pick up extra passengers even though the van is completely full. They just bark at the passengers already on board to budge up so that three people sit in two seats and four in three seats, etc. Once again, the Thais don't say a word but just comply.

In some ways it's nice that they consider other people before themselves. Sacrificing their own comfort allows others to get to where they want to go to. However, they just leave themselves open to abuse. Minivan drivers and bus companies increase profits by overloading their vehicles at the expense of their passengers' comfort and safety. For as long as no one complains, nothing will ever change.

Giving Strangers The Benefit Of The Doubt And Forgiveness

I am fairly cynical and suspicious of new acquaintances. I don't think these are natural traits I was born with but they have been developed as a result of age and experience and act as a kind of defence mechanism. Most Thais I meet aren't at all like this. There is a certain naïvety about many Thais but it is a nice quality and quite endearing. I am still surprised at how nice they are to particular types of foreign tourist who I would give an extremely wide berth to.

They are also very forgiving and don't seem to harbour grudges for very long. A male colleague of my Thai girlfriend saw me alone in a bar one evening listening to a live band. I was on my own, although I chatted briefly to a group of girls at the bar, and I left alone. The following day my girlfriend called sounding most upset and asking me questions about the night before. This guy had told her that I left the bar with a girl and drove away on the back of the girl's motorbike.

My girlfriend didn't talk to her lying colleague for a few days but she forgave him quite quickly. It was different for me though. Whenever I visited her at work and saw him I just could not bring myself to talk to him ever again. It was a spiteful lie and I couldn't work out what his motivation was for telling it. I cannot understand why people lie like this but the point I wanted to make was about forgiveness.

It is difficult for me to forgive and even more difficult to forgive quickly. The Thais aren't quite as meek and mild-mannered as they might appear at first. The girls especially are capable of big temper tantrums. When my girlfriend gets in a rage she can be pretty harsh with her tongue and say some very nasty things.

However, a couple of hours later she will want to forget everything that was said and go back to how things were before. Maybe I am too sensitive but nasty words affect me for quite a long time. My view is that once bad things are said they can't just be retracted but in the Thai world they can be apparently. It's another one of those little cultural differences that can take a bit of getting used to.

Enjoying Life

Yes, Thais enjoy life - the majority of them anyway. It seems an obvious thing to say but I am sure a lot of people in the West don't really enjoy life. Being comfortable and happy (sabai) and having fun (sanuk) are more important to most Thais than career aspirations or accumulating money. I think that generally their expectations are lower than the expectations of most Westerners. They don't continually lust for things that are just out of their reach. It is this 'craving' that leads to dissatisfaction in life and eradicating it is a cornerstone of Buddhism.

They also tend to concentrate on the present - another Buddhist teaching. We can only experience the present so when you think about it, getting hung up on the past or worrying about the future is counter productive and leads to anxiety but many people in the Western world fall into this trap. Thais maybe take not worrying about the future a little too far. If we borrow money we should at least give some thought as to how we will repay the first instalment.

Patriotism

King and Country are not to be taken lightly in Thailand. On Thai TV and radio the national anthem is played twice each day at 8am and 6pm. At Thai cinemas a splendid tribute to HM the King is shown before performances and everyone stands. I have seen people stop in their tracks on the street and stand to attention because somewhere in the area the national anthem can be heard faintly in the distance. Waiting in a crowded Bangkok bus station one Friday evening the national anthem was played on the TV screens that are there to keep passengers amused as they wait for their buses. Everyone rose to their feet. The sight of this spontaneous action involving several hundred people showing such respect was quite overwhelming.

On the negative side I feel that Thailand may not be doing itself any favours by excluding foreigners as it does, but the problem, like so many problems in Thailand, stems from greedy politicians. Not excluding them exactly, but being very selective about the foreigners it wants. Big spending tourists are quite welcome to stay in the luxury resorts of Phuket in order to inject their money into the economy. And perhaps they might even wish to purchase a Thailand Privilege Card for 25,000 US dollars? However, in many businesses the view is that Thais can do a better job than foreigners - even the business of teaching English.

National pride has at times blinkered Thailand's eyes to realism. Refusing foreign aid after the December 2004 tsunami disaster to show that 'Thailand doesn't need help from other countries' was a rather arrogant and short-sighted decision. I'm sure there were many Thai people affected by the disaster who would have appreciated that aid. Singapore had to swallow its pride, embracing foreign business and foreigners to advance to the developed world but look at Singapore now. In this current 'Thai loves Thai' era, Thailand is potentially creating unnecessary problems for itself.

Spirit Houses

Spirit houses are a common sight in Thailand, many business buildings and domestic dwellings have them. The grander the building then the grander the spirit house will be. Modest spirit houses are no bigger than the average bird table in an English garden but big hotels, for example, will have highly impressive ones. If you visit the MBK shopping centre in Bangkok it's worth taking a look outside to see the magnificent spirit house guarding that building.

Spirits are not wanted inside the main building so the spirit house provides them with a place of their own in which to live. To make the spirit houses attractive to the spirits, incense is burned and food is left out (the food generally ends up as a meal for the local birds and rats).

At the end of its life the spirit house is not discarded along with regular garbage. It has to be disposed of appropriately. I have noticed many spirit house 'burial grounds', normally close to a Wat, where old spirit houses have been left. Among the leaves and foliage can be seen the remnants of old spirit domiciles that once provided an insurance policy for the house owner against mischievous spirits but are now no longer required.

Thai Attitudes Towards Animals

Animals are living creatures, just like us, who have the right to live just as we do. The first precept of Buddhism is Respect For Life: Not to Kill; To Protect. This applies to animals and plant life just as it does to people.

The Thai attitude towards animals is the same as it is towards most things. There is a natural law of order which applies to all aspects of life so don't interfere with it. As mere humans we can do little to alter the powerful laws of nature.

Animals are pretty much left to their own devices. The Thais do not sterilise animals and generally they don't cull animals unless there is an Apec summit being held in Bangkok and the government are afraid that the stray dogs will be an embarrassment to visiting dignitaries and George Bush.

The animals breed unchecked, many young animals die and those that survive continue to repeat the cycle. To Western minds it can be difficult to accept because there are a lot of abandoned kittens and puppies that are obviously suffering.

The Western solution would be to find homes, and to sterilise animals, in order to try to get the problem under control. Thais don't see it this way. It's just one of those aspects of life that is different between the two cultures.

Where societies have tried to control human population by limiting the number of children born into any one family it has caused massive problems. Chinese and Indian families all wanted their only child to be a son and used whatever method they could to make sure this would happen. It resulted in a huge demographic imbalance where one generation was desperately short of females.

More often than not, when humans start interfering with nature it upsets the balance. The Thais respect this and interfere very little. It seems cruel at times to Western eyes but so is nature cruel.

Thailand is not a great place for cat lovers. The stray dogs seem to survive pretty well even though most look appalling, but cats struggle. Wily old tom-cats who have managed to survive their first couple of years get by but for females and kittens it is a different story.

I like to make friends with Thai cats as I do with Thai people but several of my feline friends have met premature deaths from dog attacks, eating rat poison or being hit by vehicles. The females are in a constant cycle of pregnancy and giving birth, and kittens normally have to fend for themselves from a very young age. Many don't last very long.

Credit to the Thais, they do show compassion for animals and if an animal just turns up uninvited - as they often do - the Thais will normally let them stay. They will usually take care of pregnant females and give them a box to sleep in to look after their kittens.

I have constant struggles with my conscience when I meet abandoned cats, which is quite often. I went through a stage of trying to rescue cats but it didn't work. I can't keep animals where I live and the ones I took to the temple were attacked and killed by dogs. I ignore them now but it still hurts.

Thais use Buddhist temples as animal dumping grounds but it causes problems for the monks. The sign above - posted outside a temple - tells people to love and take care of animals; not dump them at temples.

Boys Who Want To Be Girls

This is another aspect of Thai culture that I haven't quite worked out .... yet. Never have I seen so many boys mincing around trying to be more girlie than the girls. It seems that on every Thai soap opera and TV game show it's obligatory to have at least one outrageous katoey (ladyboy). The Thais are very tolerant towards them and apparently find them most amusing.

It's a strange one. I don't have any statistics so I don't know if there are actually more boys feeling this way about their sexuality in Thailand than in other countries. Maybe there are or maybe it is the tolerant nature of Thailand that allows them to be what they want to be and in other countries they would have to suppress it?

I honestly don't know but if I find out more I'll add my comments here.

What continues to surprise me is the amount of katoeys I see and where they turn up. I'm sure that I could go to the Bohemian area of a large city almost anywhere in the world and find a few transvestites but in Thailand that isn't necessary.

Just near where I live in the provinces there is a small women's clothes boutique. It's nothing special or anything. My girlfriend spotted a dress in the window she liked one day so we went in. As soon as we were got through the door a katoey came mincing across in that way only katoeys do. Real girls never walk like that.

S/he was helpful and friendly enough. When we left s/he gave us a combined curtsy/wai and a long "khawp khun khaa". I haven't got a problem with it at all but when they turn up out of the blue like that it still strikes me as a bit weird.

I have a fledgling theory after spending a year-and-a-half in Thailand but it could be complete rubbish. Any comments are welcome. Thai society is horribly sexist and women are definitely second-class citizens. When it comes to raising children there is no sense of shared responsibility, that job quite plainly belongs to the mother and other female members of the extended family.

I've noticed that all school teachers teaching young children seem to be female. My conclusion is that Thais therefore live in a very female dominated world in the early years of their life. They are very gently nurtured by loving mothers, sisters, aunts, grandmothers and female teachers.

What people experience in their first few years of life has a big influence on the type of people they become later in life. With such a big female influence in their early lives, could this be the reason so many boys apparently feel more comfortable being girls?