Understanding Thai Culture Through American Eyes

By William Drake

There is so much that is so different for an American seeking to understand and adapt to Thai ways, but everything can be brought into focus rather quickly if you work diligently at learning the language, and if you don’t succumb to the temptation to remain the eternal tourist. Whether you are just visiting or staying for a while, or perhaps for a lifetime, you’ll adapt quickly and easily in this welcoming society, as long as you make a determined effort to meet and befriend real Thais living real Thai lives, rather than clinging to the lovely and sensual illusions that are offered to you generously and easily at every turn of the road.

It’s said that culture is like water to a fish – the fish can’t understand the objective nature of water, even though water is its entire existence until it finds itself caught and pulled onto dry land and into a universe of air.

It is virtually impossible for us to understand the cultural values, norms, beliefs and assumptions that make up our own cultural ‘water’ until we find ourselves washed up on a foreign shore. There we find ourselves in a culture where everyone is immersed in the everydayness and the naturalness of ‘the way things are’ for them. It is literally as natural to them as the air they breathe, just as we are in our own home culture. But now we are immersed in Thai culture.

Everyday life will seem strange and even exotic because of the contrast with all the “cultural cloud” that we carry with us – a kind of fog you walk around in when you are new to a culture. It takes a few weeks to burn off, but eventually it does and you begin to see things for what they are.

Once you get to know Thais as people rather than exotic strangers, and once you are beginning to understand the language and communicate in broken but much-admired Thai, you’ll soon also find yourself occasionally thinking “mai pen rai” when things aren’t going the way you like. That’s then you’ll know that you’ve officially arrived in Thailand.

• Language: English
• Publisher: William Drake
• Release date: Jan 1, 2019

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Introduction

People from all over the world have been attracted to long visits and even living in Thailand for centuries. Thailand is home to large numbers of thoroughly integrated Westerners and other Asians, as well as being the home for communities from virtually every other culture on earth.

Few other cultures routinely display more appreciation for the idiosyncrasies of a foreigner who wants to adapt and fit into their culture. This isn’t to say that the Thai people are without faults – there are those who can be critical, rude, deceitful, even hostile to those who they call ‘Farang", but they can also be that way with their fellow Thais who come from another part of the country, or who are without money or social position, or who just rub them the wrong way.

It’s also important to say that no single individual Thai person can be ‘predicted’ using the information in this book, for many reasons. In business situations the surface courtesies will always be observed, but not until you have established a longer relationship will the traditional courtesies come forward.

For example, only after some time will a Farang professional or business person be introduced by a Thai counterpart to others in his business network. Thai professionals will incorporate traditional Thai values in their lives and will interact with other Thais and with Farangs very differently from how a domestic servant from Issan, a Taxi driver from KL, or a shopkeeper from the southwestern coast will do so.

In Thailand you will be treated and reacted to on the basis of your perceived status – something you are almost certainly not used to in the US. This means that different aspects of Thai culture will be shown to different Farangs by different Thais – only after you come to understand how your particular personality and appearance affect Thais you are meeting for the first time will you come anywhere close to being able to predict how you will be treated. In my own experience the better you speak the Thai language the more you are treated with traditional interpersonal courtesies at all levels of society.

In professional situations like teaching you will be in a moderately elevated social position and will be treated with traditional courtesies by those below you and, usually, with friendly support from Thai colleagues on your own organizational level. It usually takes a while to go beyond professional friendliness with fellow staff people in an institution like a school or office, and not always for the reasons you may think.

A Thai person might be reluctant to invite a Farang colleague home until they knew them very well, or ever, if they live in a traditional Thai way, perhaps with their family, or perhaps in a very small place – anything that might make them at all unsure how the Farang person would react. Thais tend to socialize in public places anyway, so for the most part this is what a new expatriate should expect for quite some time. In other words, not being invited home by your new Thai friends doesn’t mean anything negative, so don’t waste your time fretting about it. And by the way, it would be better if you restricted your invitations to your new Thai friends to asking them to join you in a restaurant or bar, no matter how nice a house or apartment you might be lucky enough to have.

Personal relationships like dating, complex as they are anyway in any culture, will be doubly complex for a Farang man and Thai woman (or vice versa) because they literally come from two different cultures when it comes to the meanings behind core ideas like love, commitment, money, time and – often – sex. The cultural complexity of any one of these concepts is beyond my ability to deal with, but the subject of Thai women and Farang men is dealt with extensively online, and only a little less so with other combinations of people, so if you are a single person thinking of becoming an expatriate in Thailand you have a lot of online resources created by people who have been there and done that.

Cultural Insight

Bangkok does have a reputation as a relationship breaker. Since we arrived here we have seen more than one marriage fail as a result of infidelity, usually in the form of the husband hooking up with a Thai woman. It is hard to say that the divorce rate is any higher here than in the general population or in other big cities. At times, though, it certainly does feel like the divorce rate is worse here.

For some single women, Bangkok can get annoying or depressing. There are few men in Thailand, either Thai or foreign, who are interested in dating farang (non-Thai) women. Many farang men come to Thailand for the express purpose of hooking up with a Thai woman, either for the evening or for the long haul. And, to be fair, men who would not usually get a second look from the average American woman find someone to be with here. For single women who are not looking for the one, however, there is still a lot of fun to be had. Justin & Emily Fisher (at) www.talesmag.com

So with all these caveats, let me say that this book is my attempt to do in perhaps some new ways what has been done in other ways many times before – to explain certain aspects of Thai culture to people whose home culture is the United States, and to others as well. We’ll explore many different ways of looking at the Thai people that will help Americans be aware of how your American-ness will interface with the Thai-ness of the people of this great culture.

Throughout the book I’ll offer some observations on some of the details of American culture that many of us are not aware of until we see them reflected in the mirror of a new culture where we are