When I was living in Thailand I lived in a small rural city called Phetchaburi, 3 hours south of Bangkok. As it was not a tourist destination I got a real authentic Thai experience. This therefore brought about a large amount of cultural shock. As a native english speaker the hardest thing of all was the communication barrier. Whilst the use of showing visuals (google images) and even using google translate (which I might add was not always useful) helped, it was still sometimes hard to communicate more complexed issues. Some of these for me included issues with my phone, minor medical problems, communicating where to go with taxi drivers (even when I showed them a map) and general communication with my colleagues.
Signs written in Thai. Another aspect of culture shock that was encountered as I couldn’t read.
Of course as a foreigner I believed that it was my job to learn the language (and cultural customs) as much as I could to assimilate. Towards the end of my time there I was able to give simple directions, ask common simple questions such as ‘how much is this?’; and was able to count to about 1000 (if I wanted to and with a lot of concentration).
Another sign written in Thai, here however I was lucky it had English written underneath it.
Growing up in a western society I was not accustomed to their culture, although I did read up on it as much as I could before I left and while I was there (as I learnt new customs). But as with many things you can only learn once you are there. As an assertive individual who came from a society where constructive criticism was the norm, I sometimes never knew and still till this day may not know if I was unintentionally offending the Thais or doing the ‘wrong’ thing. Being in their country I believe that you should respect their way of life, or to be frank, go elsewhere. I had to learn to not offend the Thai people by making them lose face. Losing face is where an individual or group of people become embarrassed or humiliated even if it were unintentional. Therefore I had to quickly learn.
Two photos of some of my colleagues. As you can see here I am the only farang. There were only 5 white teachers out of a staff of more than 150.
Below I have listed some things I knew before I left or had learnt while over there (sometimes the hard way).
The Thai people respect the royal family and any criticism in any form can put you in jail for up to 7 years. Therefore you should never step on a coin (as it has the late King’s head on it). Luckily for me whenever I dropped a coin I always remembered not to stop it with my foot like I would back home.
Thais are very hospitable people and will always try their best to make you feel happy, however they will never tell you what they really think or feel. Hence why they are called ‘the land of smiles’. They even smile when they are angry, sad or even when someone has died. This, I struggled with as I have always strongly believed that expressing emotion and sharing how you feel was a main characteristic of living a healthy lifestyle.
Unlike western culture, confrontation is a big no no, even if you are being assertive or giving constructive criticism. For me I realised too late that I had made a Thai lose face when trying to communicate with them. We both couldn’t understand each other and because of this, they just walked away as they found it embarrassing.
Corruption is the norm. They will charge farang (white people) sometimes four times more than a local. One example was when I couldn’t contact my regular tuk tuk driver in a tourist area. After trying to haggle I still payed double the price even after they tried to charge me four times more. On the other hand my wage was four times more than the Thais. This never sat with me well because 99% of the time they do more work than the English teachers. But it was the Thai way.
You must never show the souls of your feet or point your feet towards someone (as they consider it the dirtiest part of the body) or touch a person’s head (as this is the most sacred). I must admit when I first started I sometimes showed the souls of my feet unintentionally and nearly touched the children’s head (a western form of affection), luckily I never did and remembered beforehand.
In this photo you can see I am working with my shoes off. It is often custom to take your shoes off inside.
The Thai language is very tonal. You get that tone wrong and you could offend or even just make them laugh (most of the time laugh as they can see you’re trying). One word was soi, but depending on your tone of voice it can mean street, beautiful or a rude phrase not known in English. So I tried to tell one of the Thai teachers that she looked beautiful and guess what my tone had implied? Yes of course, the rude phrase. In the end she worked it out and just laughed and said thank you.
When you say hello it is custom to do the wai sign and to bow your head slightly, whereas in western culture you’d shake hands. I went to do this once without thinking... ‘face palm’.
A picture of me doing the ‘wai’
One of the hardest things sometimes (depending on the type of food) was not being able to put a fork in your mouth (you can use it to help pick up the food). Try eating noodles or spaghetti with a spoon. I actually got pretty good at it in the end.
Speaking of food. As I did on occasion try some street foods I ended up with diarrhoea and vomiting not once but three times!!! I must admit my spice tolerance is much better now.
Some street food to choose from at the markets. I was definitely to scared to try these.
- Lastly, I had a love/hate relationship with the saying ‘mai pen rai’ meaning ‘it’s ok, don’t stress’. While this attitude was great the majority of the time I did sometimes get frustrated with how slow things sometimes got done. For example if I needed worksheets they had to be in to print 3 days beforehand, whereas back home I would do it myself in 5 minutes.
As a Buddhist society you can easily see how the act and saying of ‘mai pen rai’ is incorporated in this country.
There you have it. While I found it a challenge at times and didn’t agree with a few of their customs, I thoroughly enjoyed the cultural experience and am looking forward to many more similar experiences in the future. It definitely let me see things from another perspective and made me even more open minded, understanding and accepting of others.