What Is Not Rude In Thailand

Steve Rosse responded to my post below, "Swearing In Thai". He was absolutely right: My post came across as a paranoid screed insinuating that Thai people are a bunch of two-faced brats who do nothing but slip in snide comments at every opportunity. Of course, this is exceptionally far from the truth, and I realize that I was actually suggesting otherwise. Point taken. I post Steve's excellent e-mail about Thai people NOT being rude (although being mistaken for such by us Westerners) below in full:

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I'm flattered you thought my suggestions worthy of blogdom, but presented like this they seem to me a little one-sided. I don't know, that blog entry just seems kind of paranoid, like "they're always whispering about me behind my back". It shoud be tempered with the other sign of the coin.

In Thailand, if you fall down a flight of stairs and break your leg, everybody around will immediately break into hearty laughter. They're not making fun of you, they're trying to help you. This is how they greet any disaster, their own or yours. Laughter takes the edge off and makes them feel comfortable, so you see them laughing at funerals, laughing at motor vehicle accidents, laughing when the tourist gets run over by a jet ski. But they're not being rude.

In Thailand, men touch men all the time and women touch women all the time. I remember the first time I visited the American embassy in Bangkok. Outside the front gate was a little police box and two Thai policemen guarding the gate. They only had one chair, and it was a hot day so they had moved the chair outside the police box. One officer was sitting on the other officer's lap. Full uniforms, peaked caps, medals, enormous sidearms, and they're sitting there, one on the other's lap, watching the traffic go by. If a Thai man likes you (speaking to men here) he will grab your arm and knead your bicep, if you're sitting he'll reach over and massage your thigh, if you're walking he will try to take your hand. Same for women, though we westerners are used to women expressing their affection for each other physically. But as a western man we may take all this touching from other men as an invasion of our personal space, and we may be offended. But they're not being rude.

In Thailand, men and women don't touch each other much outside of the home. If you happen to have a Thai girlfriend or a Thai boyfriend, and you go to some romantic but public spot to watch the sun go down or maybe have a meal, and you naturally reach over to take your lover's hand, that lover may recoil in horror, because you're out in public. Even young women or men who make their livings dancing nearly naked on top of a bar will be shy about holding hands with their lover in the public market. But they're not being rude.

In Thailand, many homes don't have chairs. When you visit a Thai home you will be asked to take off your shoes and sit on the floor, and to many Westnerners with the stiff knees, hips, and spines that come from a lifetime spent in chairs, this can be quite uncomfortable. You may know that this family has chairs in the dining room, and you may wonder why they don't bring them into the living room for western guests. The fact is, it simply does not occur to them. And if they heard from a third party that you had been uncomfortable on the floor, and were angry at them for not offering a chair, they would respond, "Why didn't he just ask for a chair?" because in their culture a guest may ask for anything he wants, unlike in the West, where our mothers teach us that to be a good guest we must accept what we're offered and don't ask for more. But they're not being rude.

In Thailand, it is not considered impolite to pick your nose in public. You may be sitting in the bank, talking to the loan manager about getting the money you need to start up your new business, buy a house, or send your son to college, and the bank manager is listening to you while he's got his index finger two knuckles deep in his right nostril. But he's not being rude.

In Thailand, if somebody likes something you have, they will compliment you by asking where you got it and how much you paid for it. If you don't want to tell them, you can say "Paw hai ma", or "my father gave it to me". It's just like "Bai nai?" the ubiquitous greeting, which means "where are you going?" In English this translates as "You! Where you go?" which sounds rude to us but is not intended that way at all. If you don't want to tell somebody that you're on your way to your proctologist's office, you say "bai tiow", or "going for a little holiday". But by asking you where you're going, or how much you paid for your watch or your car or your bottle of Chivas, they're showing a friendly interest and letting you know they like you. Their language has lots of little noncommital answers for use in such situations and they naturally assume ours would too. They're not being rude.

In Thailand, it is considered impolite to ruin somebody's day by giving them bad news. You know how in the West people will rush to be the first person to deliver bad knews? I can remember that on September 11, 2001, there was this guy dashing around the company where I worked, hurrying from office to office, telling everybody that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. Finally he stationed himself by the front door, catching people as they arrived for work and directing them to the conference room where a TV was tuned to CNN and everybody was watching CNN do exactly the same thing on a global scale, showing the film clip of the first collision over and over and over. Well, Thai society creates people who are just the opposite of that guy in my office. In Thailand, the people go to great lengths to avoid being the bearer of bad news. This means that if you manage a hotel, you may be the last person on the property to find out a guest drowned in the pool, or the electricity went out to the basement overnight and all the wine in the cellar went bad. Your landlord may never tell you a rat was found in the well last week, and your mechanic will let your car throw a rod before he'll mention that worn fan belt. It also means that trying to find out what's really happening by reading a Thai newspaper is a futile exercise. But they're not being rude.

Thai people don't go around thinking up ways to be rude to foreigners, although in a place like Pattaya, or Phuket, or Bangkok, where they have to deal with the drunken, rude, violent behavior of millions of foreigners every year, they may take extra pleasure in being rude right back. But the standards that define what is rude and what is not vary from place to place. Our pride gets offended if we think we're being deceived, if we think somebody is taking advantage of our ignorance to insult us without our knowledge. But life is too short to take offense where none is intended, or to miss a compliment when one is offered. The only way to avoid these things is by spending most of your time in social situations observing, listening, and thinking about what's going on. In any country, in any culture on the planet, the guest who does not dominate the conversation, who learns a few of the rules, and who helps clean up after the party, finds himself or herself invited to a lot of very amazing places.