Thailand
A kingdom in the heart of Southeast Asia, never colonized, shaped by Buddhism, a gentle and easygoing temperament, and a deep respect for rank and the revered king. The complete guide, the forces first.
Thailand is a kingdom in the heart of mainland Southeast Asia, home to about seventy two million people and proud of being the one country in the region never ruled by a European power. Its way of life rests on a few deep forces. The first is Buddhism, followed by almost everyone, which fills the country with temples and saffron-robed monks and shapes its calendar, its values, and the daily making of merit. The second is a cluster of gentle social values: a calm and cool temperament, a deep consideration for others, a love of fun, and an easygoing acceptance summed up in the words for never mind. The third is a careful respect for rank, age, and elders, shown in the palms-together greeting. Binding these is a strong national identity of nation, religion, and king, with a deeply revered monarchy at its centre. From these flow a lively spirit world, a famous cuisine, joyous festivals, and the courtesy that earned the country its name as the land of smiles.
Buddhism and merit
The deepest force in Thai life is Buddhism, which almost every Thai follows and which colours nearly everything. Thailand keeps the older, southern form of the religion, and its temples, by the tens of thousands, stand at the heart of every community as places of worship, learning, and gathering, their golden spires a familiar sight across the land. The monks who live in them, with their shaved heads and saffron robes, are the most respected figures in Thai society, and the giving of food and gifts to them is a daily part of life.
At the centre of everyday Buddhism is the making of merit, the earning of good through generosity, kindness, and devotion, which is believed to bring good fortune in this life and a better birth in the next. Each dawn the monks walk out from their temples with their bowls, and people kneel to place rice and food in them, the giver gaining merit and the monk his daily meal. Thais make merit too by visiting the temple, offering flowers and incense before the image of the Buddha, freeing caged birds or fish, and giving to the building and keeping of temples. Behind it lies the belief in karma and rebirth, that deeds bear fruit and that one is born again and again until release.
The faith shapes the Thai character as much as the Thai calendar. From it come the values prized throughout the culture: calmness, patience, humility, and compassion, and a gentle acceptance of what life brings. For Thai men, to enter a monastery as a monk for a time, often in young manhood, is a common and honoured passage, undertaken in part to make merit for one's parents and to repay the debt owed them. To understand Thailand is to begin in its temples, for Buddhism is the ground from which the rest of the culture grows.
The cool heart and the love of fun
Thais are known the world over for an easygoing warmth, and behind it lies a cluster of values that shape how they meet one another and the world. The first is a prizing of the calm and cool heart. To stay composed, patient, and unruffled, to meet trouble with a smile rather than with anger, is admired, while to raise the voice, show temper, or force a confrontation is thought a loss of control and brings a loss of face to all concerned. Disagreements are smoothed over gently, and a problem is more often met with a shrug and the Thai words for never mind than with a quarrel.
Bound up with this is a deep consideration for others, a reluctance to impose, to embarrass, or to disturb another's ease. A Thai will often soften a refusal, hold back a blunt opinion, or go out of the way to spare someone discomfort, valuing the comfort of the group and the keeping of everyone's dignity above getting one's own way. With it comes a warm, spontaneous kindness, an instinct to help a stranger, offer the better seat, or press food on a guest, that flows readily and is much prized.
The lightest of these values is the love of fun. Thais hold that life and even work should carry enjoyment, and they bring a spirit of play, humour, and good company to gatherings, meals, and labour alike. The smile is the outward sign of all of it, used not only in joy but in greeting, thanks, apology, and the smoothing of awkward moments, so that the visitor meets warmth at every turn. These gentle values, more than any rule, give Thai life its famously friendly and unhurried feel.
Rank, age, and respect
Beneath the easy warmth runs a careful sense of rank, for Thai society places everyone in an order of higher and lower by age, standing, and role. A person knows whether another is senior or junior to them and behaves accordingly, with the younger owing respect and deference to the older, and all owing it to monks, teachers, elders, and those of high position. This ordering is felt not as coldness but as the proper and courteous arrangement of people, each giving and receiving the regard their place calls for.
The clearest sign of it is the graceful greeting of respect, the palms pressed together before the chest and the head bowed slightly over them, called the wai. The higher the hands are raised and the deeper the bow, the greater the respect shown, so that one greets a friend, an elder, and a monk each with a different height of the hands. The younger or lower person offers it first, and it serves as hello, thank you, and apology alike. Respectful speech, titles, and small deferences in seating and serving carry the same regard through the day.
This respect rests above all on age and on gratitude to those one owes. Elders are honoured and cared for, and the duty children owe their parents, the repaying of the debt for the gift of life and upbringing, is among the strongest of Thai values, expressed in care, obedience, and the merit a son makes by ordaining. Teachers too are deeply honoured, treated almost as second parents and thanked each year in a ceremony of respect. The ordering of people by rank and age, far from being resented, is woven into the courtesy that marks Thai life at every turn.
Nation, religion, and king
Thais hold a strong sense of who they are as a people, summed up in three words that stand for the pillars of the nation: nation, religion, and king. The three bands of colour on the Thai flag stand for them, the red for the nation and its people, the white for the Buddhist faith, and the blue for the monarchy at the centre. To be Thai is to belong to this trinity, and it gives the country a deep and shared identity.
A particular source of pride is that Thailand, alone among the countries of Southeast Asia, was never ruled by a European power. While its neighbours fell one by one under colonial rule, the Thai kingdom, through skilful diplomacy and the playing of one great power against another, kept its independence, and Thais cherish this unbroken sovereignty as proof of their nation's resilience and a foundation of their identity. The old name of the country was Siam; the name Thailand, meaning the land of the free, was taken in the twentieth century.
At the heart of the nation stands the king. The Thai monarchy is held in a reverence that runs far deeper than mere respect, the king regarded as a figure almost sacred, the upholder of the Buddhist faith and the symbol and unifier of the whole people. His image hangs in homes, shops, and public places, the royal anthem is played and stood for, and the law protects the monarchy from insult with real severity. Whatever the turns of Thai politics, this reverence for the throne, joined to faith and nation, remains a binding force at the centre of Thai life.
The spirit world
Alongside and beneath its Buddhism, Thailand keeps a rich and living world of spirits, and the two sit together without conflict. The clearest sign of it is the spirit house, a small ornate shrine on a post, shaped like a little temple or a traditional home, that stands in the grounds of nearly every house, shop, hotel, and office in the country. It is built as a dwelling for the spirits of the place, those who were displaced when the building went up, and the people who live or work there tend it daily with offerings of flowers, incense, food, and drink, asking the spirits' goodwill and protection.
This belief in spirits is older than Buddhism in the land and was never displaced by it. Thais hold that spirits dwell in the home, the land, the trees, the rivers, and the fields, and that they must be honoured and kept content, and they turn to them, as to the Buddha, for protection and good fortune. Woven in too are elements from Hinduism, brought long ago from India, so that Hindu gods are honoured at certain famous shrines and Brahmin priests conduct some royal and ceremonial rites.
The same openness to unseen power runs through daily life. Many Thais wear amulets, small blessed images of the Buddha or revered monks, for protection and luck, and a good amulet may be greatly prized. People consult fortune-tellers and the stars, and choose lucky days for a wedding, a journey, a move, or the opening of a business, and a monk may be asked to bless a new house or car. None of this is felt to stand against Buddhism; the Thais weave the Buddha, the spirits, the Hindu gods, and the reading of fortune into one practical and easy whole.
The table
Thai food is famous around the world for its bright, bold balance of flavours, and at home it is built, like much of Asian cooking, around rice and around sharing. Rice is so central that the ordinary Thai phrase for eating a meal means simply to eat rice, and a meal is rice with a number of dishes set in the middle of the table to be shared by all, each person taking a little of this and that onto their own plate of rice. The dishes are eaten with a spoon held in the right hand and a fork in the left, the fork used to push food onto the spoon, while chopsticks are kept mostly for noodles.
The heart of the cooking is its balance of tastes. A good Thai dish plays sweet, sour, salty, spicy, and sometimes bitter against one another in a single bright harmony, built on chillies, lime, garlic, fish sauce, herbs, and fragrant roots and leaves. The food can be fiercely hot, and it is fresh and aromatic, and it has given the world such dishes as the spicy and sour shrimp soup, the fried noodles known abroad as pad thai, and the green papaya salad of the northeast. Each region keeps its own table, the north and northeast favouring sticky rice taken up in the fingers, the centre and south the steamed grain.
Eating is sociable and easy, and street food, cooked and eaten at roadside stalls, is one of the joys of Thai life. The meal carries the culture's gentle courtesies, the eldest served and beginning first, food taken modestly from the shared dishes, and the whole eaten in the spirit of company and pleasure that Thais bring to the table. To share a Thai meal is to taste both the food and the warmth and fun at the centre of the culture.
The festival year
The Thai year is bright with festivals, most of them Buddhist and tied to the moon. The greatest is the Thai New Year in April, called Songkran, which falls in the hottest days of the year and lasts for three. At its heart it is a festival of cleansing and respect: people clean their homes, bathe the images of the Buddha in scented water, and gently pour water over the hands of their elders to ask their blessing and wash away the old year's misfortune. From this gentle rite has grown the joyous side the world knows, in which whole streets become friendly water fights, and the country drenches itself in play under the April heat.
The other great festival is the festival of lights, Loy Krathong, on the full moon of the twelfth lunar month, usually in November. On its night Thais make small floats of banana leaves, flowers, candles, and incense and set them adrift on rivers, lakes, and canals, watching the little lights drift away bearing the year's ill luck and bad feeling with them, and carrying a wish for the year to come. In the north, the same season fills the sky with glowing paper lanterns released into the dark, one of the loveliest sights in the country.
Through the rest of the year fall the Buddhist holy days, marked with candlelit processions around the temple and the making of merit, and the great passages of life. A young man's ordination as a monk is a family celebration, a wedding is blessed by monks and by the pouring of water over the couple's hands, and even a funeral is an occasion of merit-making, with monks chanting through the night to speed the dead toward a good rebirth. Festival and rite alike turn on the temple, the family, and the making of merit.
Courtesy and the body
Thai courtesy is gentle and pervasive, and a visitor soon meets its customs, many of them centred on the body. The greeting of respect, the palms together and the slight bow, is the first, given and returned according to the standing of the other. Beyond it lies a strong sense that the body has a high part and a low part, charged with meaning. The head is held the highest and most sacred part of a person, so one does not touch another's head, even a child's, nor pass things over someone's head.
The feet, by contrast, are the lowest and least clean, and so a great deal of Thai courtesy guards against giving offence with them. One does not point the feet at a person or at an image of the Buddha, nor rest them on furniture, nor step over another person; sitting on the floor, Thais tuck their feet away behind them. Shoes are removed before entering a home and a temple, and at the temple one dresses modestly, with shoulders and knees covered, and behaves with quiet reverence before the images and the monks. A woman takes care not to touch a monk or hand him anything directly.
Underlying all these is the calm, considerate spirit described already. Voices are kept low and tempers in check, for public anger shames everyone present; disagreements are met with a smile and settled gently and in private. The visitor who greets with the palms together, keeps their feet and voice in their place, shows respect at the temple, and meets all things with a smile will find the warmth for which Thais are famous opening readily before them. These courtesies are not stiff rules but the daily form of the culture's gentleness and respect.
The nation
Thailand sits at the centre of mainland Southeast Asia, bordered by Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia, and Malaysia, a kingdom of about seventy two million people. Its capital and only great city is Bangkok, a vast, hot, and bustling metropolis on the Chao Phraya River, the seat of government, commerce, and the monarchy. The country falls into distinct regions, each with its own character: the mountainous north around Chiang Mai, once a separate kingdom; the dry northeastern plateau, close in language and food to neighbouring Laos; the fertile central plain of rice fields around Bangkok; and the long southern peninsula reaching toward Malaysia, where many are Muslim.
The Thai trace their kingdom back some seven centuries, through the early realms of Sukhothai and Ayutthaya to the present line of kings, founded when the capital was set at Bangkok in the late eighteenth century. Through the age of European empire the kingdom kept its independence, and in the twentieth century it changed from a monarchy of absolute power to one limited by a constitution. Since then its politics have been turbulent, passing through many constitutions and alternating between elected governments and periods of military rule, though the monarchy and the Buddhist faith have remained fixed points above the changes. The king today is the tenth of the present line.
For all the turns of its politics, Thailand has grown into one of the more prosperous countries of the region, the second largest economy in Southeast Asia. It is one of the world's great growers and exporters of rice, a busy centre of manufacturing, and a destination for many millions of visitors drawn by its beaches, temples, food, and the warmth of its people. Beneath the modern surface the old culture holds firm: the monks still walk at dawn, the spirit houses still receive their offerings, the festivals still fill the streets, and the gentle values of Buddhism and respect still order the life of the land of smiles.