Just another Friday night with friends

Cultural Nuances

Even without ghost stories, the evening get-togethers can be great hilarious fun. The stories, the anecdotes, the quibbling, and the colloquialisms all add plenty of colour and result in copious amounts of laughter. The language used on many occasions is extremely intricate, and there is plenty of fun to be had without resorting to vulgarities. Some of the greatest parties are when the men are seated in one circle, slowly getting sloshed, while the women are seated in their own little group nearby; slowly getting sloshed. At some point during the evening, some young single man will make a comment or two about the single girls sitting in the nearby group. There will be a dead silence for a few seconds, then suddenly one of the girls will come back with a retort that cuts to the quick, but is not vulgar in any way, yet she has just told the offending gentleman that he is nothing more than a shriveled cucumber. This is when the banter starts, and at some point during the conversation, the rest of the crowd gets involved, and for the uninitiated, some of the repartee can leave your ears burning at the things insinuated.

There are a number of cultural things that the uninitiated have to get used to when first doing the rounds of the local community. Of course, the doors into the houses are usually a lot lower than those in the west, so it’s best to duck, but that’s also a blessing, as it helps you in showing the right amount of respect to the home owner as you’re trying to make the wai as a greeting upon entering the house.

Shoes Off!!!

A second lesson quickly learned is that shoes have to be taken off at the bottom of the stairs. This is actually not so much taught you in a straightforward manner, but more by trial and error. It’s impossible to climb the stairs with size 12 shoes, so the only alternative is to leave them parked down below. Shoes must be removed, and at most houses in the countryside, there is a small foot bath at the bottom of the stairs where you can wash your feet before proceeding to the house above (Although this may not be as true now as it used to be, there are still plenty of homes where you can spot the little cement bath expressly built for this purpose). Using these foot baths is great when you’re wearing flip flops, but when you come armed with leather shoes and socks, it becomes a bit more of a balancing act, and as a result, a quick change to flip flops the next day.

Craftsman at work carving temple doors in Thailand

Give the Temple Threshold a miss

There is also the fact that in many homes in rural areas meals are still served on a mat laid out on the floor of the home and everyone sits cross-legged around the food, making the best of a spoon and fork to eat. NEVER is it considered proper and polite to point your feet at the food, or to step across it. As a matter of fact, it is best to learn early on that it is best not to step over anything except the threshold at the entrance to the temple. This is particularly true for stepping over someone’s tools or equipment that they use for their trade or careers – a carpenter will be offended if you were to simply step over his box of chisels, while a painter would botch his painting if he saw you stepping over his brushes and acrylics. The threshold of the temple, however, must be stepped across instead of on, even if it is quite wide, as stepping on it will allow your body to serve as the conduit that connects the sinful exterior with the holy interior, and as such allow the evil outside passage to the inside. There are many such cultural nuances, and it takes a while to get used to them – it’s a good thing the Thai people are very forgiving.

Pedestrians in Bangkok are nothing more than bowling pins to drivers…

Sathorn Road at evening rush hour. For pedestrians an obstacle course.

Unconscious Actions Lead to Discomfort… and Humour

While having dinner seated on the floor may be a bit difficult for most non-Asian visitors, the drinks served during dinner can alleviate the pain somewhat, and shortly after dinner it is quite possible that you’ll find yourself sitting on another mat on a dais-type construction, sipping the umpteenth glass of the local brew. Thai society is very much a society of personal interaction, and touch. To western visitors this can be quite uncomfortable the first few times you attend a local gathering. I must admit the first time someone put their hand on my upper leg so he could lean over all the better to hear what the person across from him was saying was a little disconcerting, but I ignored and adapted. For 30 years I blended in quite easily with friends and acquaintances, and I obviously picked up many cultural behaviours and actions. How much I have adopted local mannerisms and behaviours was made abundantly clear when I returned to Canada for a year to attend university recently. Unwittingly, I had apparently made one of my fellow students uncomfortable when, during a discussion in a group, I had placed my hand on his knee to either emphasize a point or to lean over to talk with another student across from me. This type of gesture in Thailand is simply normal, and nothing is thought of it; in the West, however, such actions can have unexpected consequences. A more humerous quirk I apparently picked up resulted in a smirk from a long-time friend from Thailand when we were visiting New York. Crossing the street, I made a slight bow to the first vehicles to stop at the crosswalk, in that way thanking them for allowing me to cross the street unmolested. It was a learned response, automatically made whenever a vehicle so much as slows down in Bangkok to let you cross the street, grateful for their kindness and sparing those 2 seconds in their extremely busy day to allow a mere peon to cross a busy street – in most cases, drivers will speed up in their haste to not lose those precious milliseconds, and to them, you are nothing more than a bowling pin…