slice-of-thai.com → Journal → 3/13/2003-4/8/2003: Favors and Culture

This is an entry from my travel journals about Thailand and Laos.

14 Mar 2003 - 16 Mar 2003

I spent the next days getting ready to return a favor I had owed for more than 3 years. At the very end of my second Thai trip (a short trip with no journals), I rented a motorbike from the owner of the Honey Inn in Nang Rong, which I also had visited on 2/25/99 as part of my first trip. When I returned the bike, I forgot to take back my passport, which was the collateral. I blithely continued on to Bangkok, ready to take my non-refundable non-changeable flight back home to the USA the next day. Then I realized. I called the owner, Kun Panna, and asked her to give my passport to a bus driver headed from Nang Rong to Bangkok. "Oh no no, can not do that," she said, insisting that the drivers could not be trusted. Instead, she got on the night bus to Bangkok herself and met me in Bangkok at about 3am, just to give me my passport. She then got on the redeye bus to return to her guests in Nang Rong. Thai people can be truly amazing sometimes. At the time, I was at a loss to figure out how I could repay her and I asked if she wanted a website. It wasn't until this trip that I honored that offer.

I purchased a laptop before coming to Thailand for the purpose of making this website (and possibly also working on my own things when I was done being a full-time tourist), and stored the laptop in Bangkok with my Thai friend Tom. Now that I was back in Bangkok I purchased a digital camera to go with the computer. Turns out that basically all computer hardware and cameras cost more in Thailand than they do on websites that ship to the US. Thanks to a tip from Tom, I found a new Canon PowerShot S30 being sold by a Chulalunkorn University student on the eBay-like thaisecondhand.com for $380, which is only a little over the US rate. The seller had purchased several cameras on his last business trip to Japan; apparently there you really can get them cheaper than the US.

17 Mar 2003 - 8 Apr 2003

Honey Inn Marketing

Set off for Nang Rong and the Honey Inn. I was rather shocked to find that Kun Panna already had a website. A Dutch guest, who strangely enough had also forgotten something which Panna had then delivered (in this case by mail), had made a site for her only a month or two prior. It's a nice fast-loading site but not so pretty and with an un-rememberable URL (now dead): http://www32.brinkster.com/honeyinn.

No problem though, Kun Panna also needed a new brochure, name cards, and some posters for a new package tour. I spent this entire period photographing the guesthouse and the local tourist attractions, and putting those together in Photoshop and PageMaker. I enjoyed using Photoshop to remove the ugly lightning cable from the 23m tall main prang of Phanom Rung temple :) Since I was having so much fun I also registered the more rememberable domain honeyinn.com and made an all-new website using the same images, style, and colors as the brochure: check out http://honeyinn.com (since 2012, Kun Panna's son has taken over the site and maintains it).

When I had finished the brochure layout, I returned to Bangkok and researched printing methods. I looked into home-brewed inkjet printing, professional laser printing, laser photocopying, digital printing (a relatively new plate-less technology) and offset printing. I probably visited 7 or 8 offices ranging from hokey consumer printshops in Mah Boon Krong shopping center, staffed by twenty-something, former sticker-shop mavens, to towering, professional book printing establishments such as Thai Wattana Panich where I was offered chilled beverages while I waited in the imposing lobby to speak with my "assistant marketing manager." The larger establishments always seemed endlessly confused, but enthusiastic, to see a somewhat-Thai-speaking farang show up and price out their products.

Offset printing was still by far the cheapest (by a factor of 10) and best quality for my situation. I had 3,000 brochures offset-printed at a cost of around 3.3 baht (8.3 cents) per brochure. If I had printed 10,000 (too many for Kun Panna to use before they became obsolete), I could have gotten the price down to 2 baht. This price included cutting, folding, and packaging. Pretty cool!

Here is a picture of the brochure. It is a 3-way folding affair printed on 2 sides of an A4-size page. When folded, the "front" of the brochure is the rightmost panel on the upper image, and the "back" is the middle panel on the upper image. The leftmost face of the upper image, and all 3 faces of the lower image, are on the "inside" of the brochure.

Honey Inn Brochure

Honey Inn Brochure

I also made a poster for a new package tour Kun Panna was considering:

Honey Inn Poster

but the details were far from solid, so I left the data with her on CD-RW so she could modify/print the poster if desired.

Amazing Desperation, Amazing Generosity

This is the longest I have ever spent in one place in Thailand. The owner and her husband and staff speak only a little English, so I got a lot of Thai practice. As I stuck around, I heard more and more of their stories. The realities, dramas, and scandals of this particular corner of Nang Rong revealed themselves like layers of an onion peeled off one by one. Good material for a novel :) The Greng Jai is so thick, the half-baked schemes and face-saving omissions are so convoluted and intertwined that it's a wonder they can keep things straight.

North-East Thailand remains the poorest region of Thailand, disproportionately plagued by gambling, alcohol, drug, HIV, and other problems as desperate residents grasp for a way out, and this tends to produce behavior that's extreme even by Thai standards. But don't draw the conclusion that North-East Thailand is a dangerous place to travel—it is probably much safer than Bangkok and just as safe as everywhere else in the country. Unlike America, where these problems face outward and generate huge homicide rates, crack houses, and dangerous slums where you don't want to be at night, in Thailand the problems face inward, destroying people's families and private lives while those same people inexplicably manage to maintain a positive, welcoming, contented face to employers, strangers, and visitors.

During this period, I helped an acquaintance of Kun Panna, who happened to be working at the Honey Inn at the time, translate some letters from English to Thai. She was an extremely hard-working 18-year-old Thai woman who grew up in Nang Rong, who I will refer to as Nit. Nit had just graduated high school with highest honors, and had received a scholarship to study biochemistry at a good technical university in Bangkok. However, as with many people in north-east Thailand, basic Bangkok living costs were far beyond her financial means, and alcohol and gambling had destroyed her parents to such an extent that she has been raising her two younger siblings by herself for at least the last 5 years. So, she had essentially no chance of ever attending that university.

One day, a few months before I arrived, a 60-something American man who I will call Bill came through Nang Rong. A successful, nearly-retired chemist at home, he had been moved by stories of poverty in North-East Thailand and had come to Isaan to give scholarships to smart, disadvantaged junior high and high school students who would otherwise not have a chance to continue their studies. While in town setting up scholarships for younger students, Bill heard about Nit through the Honey Inn, and after meeting her briefly and talking with her teachers, he decided to make a most amazing commitment, described in the letter I translated for her.

Bill set up a trust fund which will support the education, living, and professional needs of Nit and her younger siblings for at least the next 12 years. Many rich "benefactors" arrive at a poor place like North-East Thailand, dump a bunch of cash to quell their guilty consciences, and leave. Such false (or at least naive) benefactors usually end up doing more harm than good since people who've grown up living off of the most recent crop or paycheck usually have not yet learned how to save or invest money, and will waste it all right away, or even if they are frugal they will typically lose the money quickly as soon as their peers find out they have it. Bill, however, is not such a false benefactor. In addition to his money, he is spending something much more costly to him and valuable to her—his time and attention. He's taking an active role in finding Nit a place to live in Bangkok, making sure her siblings get taken care of, and generally spending time looking over her as would a parent. They refer to each other as father and daughter. When an aged farang generously takes a young Thai woman under his wing, one is unfortunately drawn by the statistics to suspect ulterior sexual motives. But Bill has gone to great lengths to make her comfortable that that is not the case. He is setting up Thailand trips for his family, and America trips for Nit, to introduce "his new daughter" to his wife and children in America. The trust fund will require ongoing administration and management, and Bill's grown-up American daughter has volunteered to be the trustee, thus also committing her own time to Nit, possibly for many years after her father has died. Bill has set up similar trust funds for several other, younger children in Thailand and America, but these other children have some kind of guardian and do not require as great a commitment as Nit.

Nit herself was stunned and dumbfounded at Bill's generosity. As she decided how to respond, and as a handful of people in town started getting word of her unbelievable good fortune, the greng jai started setting in...

Nam Jai, Gadtanyuu, Greng Jai and Other Thai Mysteries

This would be as good a time as any to attempt to explain these fundamental aspects of Thai culture, which are relevant not only to the current story but nearly every other weirdness I have observed on my Thailand travels.

After 5 years of hanging out with Thai people, a 2.5 year relationship with an English-fluent Thai woman (born in Nang Rong, strangely), and 8 months spent in the country, I am still in the process of figuring out what they mean and how their subtleties play into every part of Thai life. These are the factors which explain the amazing generosity for which Thailand is so famous (and what Thais expect "in return"). These were major factors in my relationship and its demise two years ago. These factors enter into Nit's situation in a surprising range of ways, not only for her but for her teachers, peers, helpers, etc., and they have a direct impact on whether she is happy and able to function properly with her peers both at home and at school, given Bill's support.

The concepts are mysterious and ever-elusive for western visitors because understanding them challenges you to disregard basic assumptions about what gives a person self-esteem, assumptions which you've taken for granted your whole life.

First let's go over the corresponding concepts in American culture. These might seem obvious to you the first time you read them. But come back and read them again after you read the Thai equivalents. If you get a little confused or weirded out, then congratulations! You are just starting to get a whiff of the mysteries a western person experiences visiting Thailand!

American Values

In my experience of people born in America (primarily east and west coast—the parts of the USA who voted for W Bush remain an equally impenetrable mystery to me), the primary factors which make someone feel good about themselves, and on which someone is judged by others in society as a "success" or a "loser," revolve around independence and the courage to expose sometimes unpleasant factual truths:

• Child Rebellion and "Fleeing the Nest": From a young age, we are taught by sources as disparate as Westerns, "Easy Rider," "Ferris Bueller's Day Off," and "Wayne's World" that we need to continually test ourselves, improve our skills, and rudely challenge authority figures as a kind of public rite of passage we must complete in order to achieve the highest goal—our independence. The prize is control over our lives: what we buy, where we live, where we work, who we hang out with, and who we marry. Those who live at home past high school are often looked down upon as too unskilled to get a job or too henpecked by their parents. Those who are a "burden" on others are judged less adequate. Saying a person "can take care of themselves" is the highest complement. Americans understand from adolescence that we need to save up for retirement throughout our lives, since it would be silly to "burden" our children by expecting them to support us. Instead, we expect we'll probably end up in some kind of "old-folks home" where we will collect pensions, social security, or IRA distributions and where our kids will drop by from time to time between bingo matches.

• Parenting: Parents are expected to display an unconditional love for their children. No matter how terrible their kids' twos are or rebellious their kids' teenage years are, and regardless of whether their kids show respect or gratitude in return, parents still support their kids financially and emotionally, and would die to protect them from harm. But it doesn't work the other way: children often feel that their parents need to earn their respect and obedience, and there is not a strong societal pressure for kids to respect and obey their parents no matter what.

  While a child's struggle to independence can sometimes be ugly and unpleasant for both parent and child, most parents seem to believe that it does more good than harm in building the child's character and self-esteem. When the children have grown up, parents may complain that their children "don't come back to visit any more," but parents are proud of a child who can make it on their own—proud not only for their kid but their own parenting ability.

• Workplace: Those who succeed in business present a confident air and are willing to take the risks associated with imposing their will on others, standing by an unpopular viewpoint which turns out to be right, or making difficult and risky promises to others which pan out. It is considered a mark of courage to ask one's boss for a raise, and if done in a convincingly confident manner with consistent follow-through (e.g. quit if you say you will quit), there is no stigma for either employee or boss in doing so. Despite the best efforts of big-company management, Americans delight in lampooning corporate conformity or corporate inefficiency, and publicly exposing corporate scandals and executive double-talk. Most workers (i.e. everyone but management) believe that bad news, whether at the level of the group or a whole company, is best exposed immediately so that it can be analyzed and problems can be avoided next time. There is great heroism associated with being a "whistle-blower" who exposes corporate scandal, primarily because such a person risks getting fired or sued and shows strength of character.

• Government: Perhaps as a side effect of the way our country started, there is a general mistrust and constant skepticism and scrutiny of the motives of anyone in authority. The government is designed with checks and balances that assume individual leaders' selfish motivations will always be at odds with any sort of common good. Although we make some feeble attempt at showing respect for authority with titles such as "Mr. President" and "Your Honor," and mumbling the Pledge of Allegiance at school, a stronger thread in our culture is always working to make sure there is some avenue for venting grievances with those elected or chosen. We regularly deface our president's image and are always pushing the envelope of showing discontent (e.g. flag burning).

• Conformity is essentially a bad word in our culture. It implies weakness of character.

• Confrontation is not usually a pleasant thing, yet at the same time, those who confront are often celebrated for being courageous or independent. Aggression is often used as a bargaining tactic in disputes, and frequently it works in favor of the aggressor. There's often no stigma associated with yelling as it may show strength of conviction.

• Fairness, Debt Repayment, and Equal Exchange are basic principles that underlie not only business deals, but personal relationships. People feel uneasy when someone has done a favor for them which they have not repaid. Unpaid favors burn at them; they want to return the favor to "even things out" so the issue can be wiped from their conscience and the matter may be considered closed. It's even better if there's some way to show the favor and the repayment have equal values in dollars or minutes or something measurable; this pleases both the giver and the returner of the favor as it allows them both to continue with their lives guilt-free without further considering the other.

• Emphasis on Reason for Actions and Consistency of Actions over Benefits: We are a culture where "the ends never justify the means." We are a culture where you do have to ask why, even if there are potentially difficult issues that will be revealed that may threaten orderly society. Someone may commit a highly beneficial act (e.g. donate to charity, take in a poor person off the street and pay for their living, pass a bill to construct low-cost housing), but if we find there to be any sort of dishonorable, hidden reason behind the act (e.g. part of a tax evasion scam, part of a pimping ring, part of a kickback program from construction firms), this invalidates any benefits and that person is judged as a "bad" person. In some sense, any amount of bad-ness can completely spoil any amount of good-ness. No respect or gratitude is due a person whose motives are found to be dodgy, even if they helped someone in the process.

• Control of Body: one of the deepest and most emotionally rooted forms of independence Americans require is control over our own body. Rape is one of the most serious violations imaginable, and always elicits condemnation of the rapist. Prostitution is one of the lowest callings and results in the lowest self-esteem and social stature, even if it allows someone to be independent in other ways, and even if it allows someone to help others.

• Money and "Good Intentions" Cannot Mix: In American culture, there's a wall between the two in business and everyday life. There is a concept that any person, image, or idea that appeals to people as "real" and "honest" becomes tarnished when it is used to gain profit. A musician or other business person may be universally admired for work that comes "from the heart," but as soon as she hooks up with a big label/chain or gets a product branding deal, she has "sold out" or "gone commercial." Even though her music/product might not have changed, it loses much of its former esteem and the person is judged lesser in society. In the eyes of the government, every company is either "profit" or "non-profit" and non-profits deserve a plethora of tax breaks. Similarly, money you pay is either in exchange for goods and services, or it is a donation, and in the latter case only, the government has a whole set of special tax deduction rules. There's an enormous stigma attached to people who "marry for money" or "marry for visa." As with the case of prostitution above, the mere presence of financial inequality between spouses calls into question whether it's just a "business deal" or whether they are truly in love. Our culture vehemently resists the idea that both can be true at the same time. Words like "sugar daddy," "sugar mommy," "gold digger," "kept woman," "kept man," and to some extent "bread-winner," roll off our tongue with unstated but universally understood negative connotations.

• Rocking the Boat: Peace and orderly society are not very high goals in our culture. In some sense, we've all decided it's worth having a "bumpy ride" in order to get the other benefits of fairness and factual truth.

Thai Values

After spending time in Thailand, it became clear that things don't quite work the same way over there. Although Thais certainly care about independence and the pursuit of factual truth, other factors take precedence in determining what gives one self-esteem.

Note: many thanks to Kruu Supatra, Kruu Nui, and others for tolerating many hours of my questions on this matter. All errors in interpretation are mine.

• Nam Jai: You could say everything starts with nam jai, literally "juice of the heart" or "flow of the heart." Everyone is judged in Thai society based on the degree to which they show it. Nam jai is "generosity," a desire to give one's time, resources, and attention to others just for the good feeling it generates in both. It isn't nam jai if the giver expects to be repaid equally, or repaid at any particular time. Although we westerners resist the idea, an act of nam jai has no mathematical magnitude and thus it cannot be repaid and should not be compared with other acts. If this sounds like an accountant's nightmare, it is.

  The ways in which Thais demonstrate nam jai go way beyond what you'd expect in American society. My journals contain many stories of Thais who went out of their way to help me get where I'm going, pay for my bus fare despite my insistence, and in the case of Kun Panna above, blow a whole night of red-eye bus travel to help me out of the bind I got myself into. Regularly you will find Thai people drop their entire life to come to the rescue of an orphaned niece or nephew (or, amazingly commonly, some unrelated person who they know) by taking them in permanently as their own child. The teachers (and many other Thai-Americans) at the temple where I study Thai language pour unbelievable numbers of hours of work into the temple without anyone having asked them. They don't get any money for their work and they don't spend time worrying about rank or any material reward. They do it because they feel nam jai towards the farangs who want to learn Thai and, by improving the public image of the temple, towards the temple's constituency and its monks.

  Bill, the generous farang, showed a great deal of nam jai in sponsoring Nit. Nit is not in a position to offer anything of value except sex, and Bill has clearly proven he's not interested in that (although Thais would respect his offer whether or not he proved it). It is enough for Bill that Nit take the opportunity to study and grow, so that hopefully she can show similar nam jai to others.

• Gadtanyuu: When a nam jai person does something for another, the other feels gadtanyuu, a "debt of gratitude." But unlike the western way, this debt can never be repaid in full and does not have a money value, time value, or any magnitude. It is merely a feeling which makes the receiver want to do things for the giver in return. Gadtanyuu does not expire: when judging whether or not he owes a debt of gratitude to the giver, the receiver does not ask "what have you done for me lately?" The receiver feels the debt because of the generosity (feeling of sharing) of the giver, not because of the value of any material or time received from the giver. Typically a receiver has humbler means than the giver anyway; the receiver will return the debt of gratitude according to his means. Neither giver nor receiver stress out over exactly when and how the debt will be repaid. The receiver does not feel "guilty" that he holds an unreturned favor. Instead, there is widespread faith in Thai society that it'll all work itself out somehow.

  Many people like to point out that this idea exists in Buddhism (widely practiced in Thailand) as "karma"/"kamma"; that all good and bad deeds one does will eventually come back to one and so "life is fair." But I don't think Thais have the faith because it's written in some Buddhist scripture. I think they have faith that the idea will work in the future because it has worked in the past. Somehow or other, when you get 65 million Thais together, most of whom believe in this idea, it works—society is orderly and people feel contented.

  This kind of "leap of faith" is not limited to Thai society: there is widespread faith in American society that all the turmoil and confrontation we have will end up making everyone happier. And for the most part the American population seems to think it does, so the idea lives on.

• Superiors and Inferiors: Until very recently, Thai children did not grow up with the same rebellious stories as American children. Instead, their parents and peers taught them from a very young age that parents, teachers, monks, government officials, and royalty have done them great service of generosity (by raising them, teaching them, or protecting them) and so the child should feel a debt of gratitude (gadtanyuu). There is even some gratitude felt to anyone who is older. The Thai person's self-esteem is thus based on the degree to which they offer generosity (if they are superiors) or return that debt of gratitude (if they are inferiors).

  Nit feels hugely indebted to Bill, not just because Bill is older, has a Ph.D., etc, but also because he has established himself as a parent and provider of unbelievable proportions.

• Titles and Deference: Unlike America, where they are looked upon with suspicion, titles and outward displays of deference are an integral part of the grammar of the Thai language and Thai everyday customs. They are one way an inferior can return part of a debt of gratitude.

  There are multiple versions of each of the pronouns I, you, he, she, etc. which you use depending on whether you consider yourself inferior or superior to the listener (I) or person being referred to (you, he, she, etc.). A Thai person uses the titles for a superior respectfully even if that superior has never done anything for them, or even if the superior has done only bad things to them. This is not because the Thai person would be punished for doing otherwise; it's because the Thai person would feel low self-esteem for doing otherwise.

  One of the first things you notice walking around Thailand is the 'wai', or the hands-held-together gesture that inferiors initiate to superiors all over Thai society as a greeting and farewell. It takes some time for Westerners to learn when to initiate a 'wai' and when not to, and we stress over offending others by doing it wrong. But we're kind of missing the point. Thais 'wai' to feel good about themselves that they are returning a debt of gratitude to someone who deserves it. For example, a Thai may 'wai' a teacher or monk they've never met before, because they have faith that that person must have helped teach a lot of other people and are thus deserving of gadtanyuu.

  The show of deference generates additional nam jai in the superior. They feel further motivated to do things for the inferior without expectation of repayment. The system supports itself.

• Don't Confront Superior: A second, highly un-American but highly important aspect of Thai culture is that an inferior avoids doing anything which questions the superior's motives or the degree to which they show nam jai. A Thai gets great self-esteem out of keeping a cool heart (jai yen) and a respectful posture even when dealing with a superior who they believe has unintentionally or intentionally done them harm. Yelling and waving your hands in any dispute is shameful: Thais don't do it, and farangs only generate disgust and lose bargaining points by doing it. Thais place great value on orderly society and maintaining a peaceful face to society—relatively more than Americans. Avoiding confrontation and maintaining face sometimes even takes priority over telling the truth, which it rarely does in American society.

  For example, a Thai employee does not ask his boss for a raise and never brings up systemic problems at work (except, in rare cases if they can be sugar coated with a possible solution, in private—certainly not in public where the boss will lose face). This goes beyond the American idea where an employee doesn't want to seem like a "complainer" to his boss because that might annoy the boss and then he'll get passed up for a raise. For a Thai, asking for a raise or pointing out a problem implies that the boss was not generously seeing to the needs of her inferiors—that the boss herself didn't realize the problem existed but should have—and thus calls into question her very value in society. The employee would feel shameful about making his boss look bad to the group, even if he feels the boss's motives are bad.

  As you would expect, this "don't ask, don't complain" custom aggravatingly often prevents either party from ever really knowing what the other is thinking or even know the important details of the others' life. Each party is thus forced to guess the feelings of the other and yet both are judged in society based on whether or not they have guessed correctly. This is the very essence of Thai society.

  This issue applies directly to the situation of Nit and Bill. As I helped her write a response to Bill, Nit was very wary of bringing up any long-standing problems in her life, even though from a western perspective this is exactly what she should do, since Bill needs to plan his financial, educational, and medical support for her over the next decades. A Thai benefactor would be aware of this and would needle Nit about every little detail and not feel surprised or angry to find that Nit was withholding some bad news. But I could see Bill getting annoyed over this down the road, so I counseled Nit to temporarily suppress her deeply-ingrained restraint long enough to tell Bill of any long-term issues he might need to know about in the future.

• Greng Jai: An inferior who has good will towards a superior (or equal) wants to avoid "inconveniencing" them at all costs. An inferior greng jais her superior by showing the superior a wide range of common courtesies (such as saving him the best seat in a car or at the dinner table, or arranging her schedule around his) but also by concealing from public view any problems she has which might reflect badly on him.

• Living with Parents: In contrast to the American custom, it is considered the highest form of responsibility for a grown-up child to live with and support her parents (either in the childhood home or a new home she arranged for them). That child will be viewed more favorably than her siblings because she is returning the debt of gratitude incurred when her parents raised her. Even if she does not live with her parents, the grown-up child will be expected to support her parents. Thailand has no state safety net, no social security or tax-favored retirement funds, and the idea of retiring to an "old-folks home" or convalescent home (of which there are virtually none) is every parent's worst nightmare and a paramount shame for the child. It is this custom which tends to generate the most stress for Thai-Americans (and many Asian-Americans) straddling both cultures.

• Teachers and Schooling: most Thais would probably be confused by Pink Floyd's lyrics from "The Wall:"

  we don't need no education
  we don't need no thought control
  no dark sarcasm in the classroom
  teacher leave those kids alone
  

  While Thailand has its share of disinterested or abusive teachers, the self-esteem of a student demands that she show respect to her superior. She may not go out of her way to help a teacher she considers to have "bad intentions," but at the same time she would not write a song or do anything to expose the teacher's foibles to the world, even if it is otherwise to her own detriment.

• How are Bad Intentions Punished? This all sounds very simplistic and everyone-just-gets-along in a "star trek" sort of way. Every western reader must be thinking that this system is ripe for abuse. If nothing in society forces someone to give and take equally, and custom dictates that nobody should confront a person who isn't nam jai, what's to stop someone from taking everything they can get?

  The answer is that the societal pressures to be nam jai are strong enough that nearly everyone is driven to it by their own need for self-esteem. The remaining people who are stingy, freeloaders, or abusers are not confronted, but also nobody does them any favors, and there is nothing in Thai culture which forbids trashing them in private or spreading the word about their lack of nam jai. They quickly find themselves with no friends.

  A notable exception to this is parents and children. Thai children of all ages feel an unconditional sense of duty (and gadtanyuu) to their parents (opposite from the direction of American parents). For example, Nit continues to tolerate and dutifully attend to the horrible problems created by her abusive and severely alcoholic father, because he is her father. If it were someone else, she would simply find a way to get away from him. But instead she will continue to bail him out of jail, check him into the hospital until he regains consciousness and escapes, and hide her younger siblings from him for as long as he is alive.

• Bottling up Discontent: Ok, what about the notion that you should not publicly expose inefficiencies or injustices, or confront people who treat you wrongly. Doesn't that generate problems in society? The answer is a resounding yes.

  The custom generally works well (perhaps better than the confrontational western society) when superiors have good intentions and take care of their inferiors (as might be the case with a good boss who fights for his/her employees). The custom fails miserably when that is not the case (as with a boss who slave-drives his/her workers) and leaves no redress of grievances for the inferior short of escape or other drastic measures. Very, very often you will hear of Thai employees who just run away one day without a trace, without explanation. This probably means their boss was mistreating them and this is the only way they can get themselves out, but still retain self-esteem because they have not publicly embarrassed their boss. The employee clearly doesn't like what the boss has done lately, but still feels a strong sense of gadtanyuu (which, as you recall, doesn't expire) for having hired the employee in the first place. The employee chooses to run away because they know the boss can then make up whatever story he or she likes for the public face, and everyone who remains can pretend to believe it, confrontation avoided.

  On rare occasions, the placid image of Thai cool-temperedness is shattered by sensational newspaper reports of employees, students, children, or others who lash out against their superiors using seemingly senseless levels of violence. This too may be evidence of discontent which greng jai individuals try to bottle up.

• Nepotism and Cronyism are unintended consequence of the system of nam jai and gadtanyuu. The good feelings associated with these cultural norms are just not compatible with the dispassionate, critical look at the issues involved in a merit-based promotion scheme, or a democratic vote. One way to say it is that Thais have trouble separating "business and personal relationships" and feel that doing so would be shameful, as it forces them to ignore debts of gratitude they have accumulated to others. In theory, Thailand has had elected local governments and an elected parliament on and off for the last 50 years, but the country never really embraced the idea that citizens vote for their representatives directly based on the issues. Instead, politicians regularly send food "bribes" (uh, I mean nam jai offerings) to the doors of tens of thousands of countryside homes right before elections, and the recipients feel gadtanyuu to vote for them. Never mind that these politicians then pass legislation to raise taxes or bulldoze their homes to make way for new roads or dams. Members of parliament are really chosen by an indirect and easily corrupted system even more convoluted than the Electoral College in the US, and so again it becomes a matter of "who you know."

• Telling the Truth is desirable in Thailand, but it is just not as important as protecting the face of those for whom Thais feel nam jai or gadtanyuu. Many Thais clearly believe there is such a thing as a "noble lie," and they are able to tell one with a minimum of guilt or trepidation if it seems it will help them or someone they respect avoid a confrontation. But in my experience these lies almost always lead to more trouble. Everyone has to second-guess everyone else about any sensitive issue (are they telling me that to protect someone else? should I greng jai them by acting as if that was true so I also avoid a confrontation and also avoid embarrassing them? or were they telling the truth?). This is the main reason why everyday Thai life seems like so much of a soap opera to me. I can understand why someone who values nam jai and gadtanyuu so much would concoct fancy stories so easily, but even so I think it does them more harm than good.

• The King: Thais have another article of faith totally absent in American culture. The same King has ruled Thailand, apparently benevolently, for over 55 years. The Thais have absolute faith in this King. In every home and business, they display his picture higher than all others. If you ask, they will speak of him in almost frighteningly glowing terms. Messing with the King in public or private is one of the biggest faux pas a visitor can commit. There is a special set of extra-formal nouns and pronouns to be used when referring to the King and other royal family members. Projects with "royal patronage" are untouchable from a budget and regulatory standpoint. The King seems to have so much authority (despite the fact that the absolute monarchy became a constitutional monarchy after a coup in 1932) because he rarely, and wisely, uses it. For example, he has used it to stop breakdowns in government which would otherwise have caused the country to collapse. Check out this eloquent description of recent Thai history from Thailand's Assumption University (formerly at http://sunsite.au.ac.th/thailand/thai_his/ww2.html which is now dead):

  During the latest period of democracy (1988-1991), Chatichai Choonhaven led a coalition of parties. The economy had unprecedented boom for three years. However, Chatichai was arrested by the soldiers who were ordered by the military to intervene as he was in the airport hangar because of corruption charges and the accusation of inability against him. Then the non-elected primer General Suchinda Kraprayoon appointed himself to hold the position on May 18, 1992. In one intervening incident, hundreds of pro-democracy protestors and many Thai people were killed and wounded in the violence. King Bhumipol (Rama IX) had to lend a hand to stop the bloodshed confrontation. Afterwards, Suchinda was forced to resign and Anan Panyarchun was appointed to the temporary primer at that time.

  And another interesting detail from http://www.wsws.org/articles/2000/apr2000/thai-a03_prn.shtml (link now dead; a socialist website speaking well of the king!):

  As the country teetered on the brink of civil war, the king intervened to stitch up a deal between the military and the bourgeois opposition to stabilise the situation. In a nationally televised spectacle, Suchhinda and opposition leader General Chamlong Srimuang crawled on their knees, literally, before King Bhumibol and pledged to collaborate to restore order. The military commanders granted a civilian government, but only on condition that they retained a powerful influence in the upper house of parliament and were granted royal amnesties.

  An account of a 1976 student massacre, which was ignited when someone falsely concluded the protesting students were burning an effigy of the crown prince, and which the Thai government continues to bury and deny to this day, is http://www.uwalumni.com/onwisconsin/2003_summer/noise1.html (oops, look like link is obsolete...guess you'll have to google it).

Thai and Western Culture Clashes

Neither the Thai nor the western system is better. They are both self-sustaining systems that maintain order in society and keep people content.

But they are not generally compatible when mixed together.

Western visitors who get mixed up in Thai-only affairs almost inevitably end up feeling they are being taken "advantage of." After all, why should a western visitor feel a motivation to give freely when:

• they have so much more money than the average Thai that they will always be on the giving end.
• they might be returning home soon anyway and so how would they ever get anything in return?
• it is so easy for Thai people to abuse their generosity by taking without any desire to return.

The western visitor in this case has not fully understood (or accepted) nam jai.

• The westerner is thinking about payback in dollar figures, but in Thai terms the Thais are constantly paying him back with their renowned generosity, and whatever help, attention, and things they can give him according to their means. If he feels this is not an "even exchange" (if he cannot make a leap of faith to see non-quantifiable value in nam jai the Thai way), then he will continue to be unhappy about more and more things the longer he is in Thailand.

• The westerner is not able to just accept, on faith, the idea that maybe things will work themselves out and everyone will be "even" in the end. Again the westerner will become increasingly stressed about this the longer he is there. I know only one westerner who has truly accepted the idea of reciprocity on faith, and it took him 14 years and a near-death illness to understand the depth to which his Thai family was committed to help him.

• The westerner is assuming that most Thais would have a motivation to "rip him off." He doesn't recognize the existence of strong Thai societal pressures that would discourage the vast majority of Thais from trying to take from him without giving anything in return. His experience of Thais is probably swayed by the subgroup of Thais who hang out around short-term tourist stops (see below).

Western tourists are also given an extremely skewed view of Thai culture by the hordes of Thai ripoff artists (a subset of hotel and guesthouse owners, taxi drivers, tuk tuk drivers, tour leaders, pimps, you name it) who accumulate around heavily touristed areas like a fungus. In this rare instance, I believe most Thais would agree that some of these people are "ripoff artists" even by the generous Thai standards. There's some gray areas, such as Tuk-Tuk drivers who bring their customers to Jewelry shops, without asking, and then tell their customers that they will receive gas coupons if the customer just goes and takes a look. I'm not talking about those guys. I'm talking about the people who flat-out lie about services or prices offered and switch their offerings when it is too late for the customer. Or Taxi drivers who take their customers to the wrong restaurant (the one where they get commission) and argue with the customer that this is the right restaurant. Or pimps who import girls from Burma on pretense of becoming dishwashers and instead lock them in brothels as slaves.

These people do not constitute a representative slice of Thais any more than the worst foreign tourists constitute a representative slice of westerners. In a Buddhist twist, I think that for every Thai ripoff artist, there are an equal number of decrepit westerners who come to visit with intentions of abusing Thais or Thai culture to an equal degree (sexually or financially or otherwise).

Thais experience their own frictions when they get mixed up in Western-only affairs and/or move to America:

• Nearly every native Thai who brings up a child in America is shocked to see their child rebel against them, demand unconditional love from them, expect them to "prove" themselves in order to "deserve" respect and obedience, and expect them to arrange their own retirement. I'm not sure there's anything that can be done to mend such a situation, unless the parent and child are both willing to bend their deeply-ingrained expectations close enough to match. If the child can come to appreciate the parent's sacrifice in raising a child in a comparatively parent-unfriendly environment, and the parent can come to appreciate the child's achievement in asserting her independence in an authority-heavy upbringing, then perhaps there is hope.

• Thai employees tend to end up running away from western bosses due to the mismatch of expectations. The bosses frequently take the employee's lack of complaint as a sign that everything must be great, and horrible problems that would be caught by a Thai boss simmer and boil over.

• Thais who live in America for a long time and move back, or whose parents one day fly over and move in, are subject to guilty pressures seen in movies like "Daughter from Danang" and "The Wedding Banquet." Every kind of feeling a western visitor feels of "being taken advantage of" is magnified many times due to the close family relationship.

• I have a theory that perhaps Thai business and contract negotiation follows along the same lines of nam jai, where the focus of a contract is on establishing the personal relationship and sense of gadtanyuu, and where the exact figures stated on the contract for repayment and deadlines are not expected to be adhered to strictly (instead the contractors rely on their faith that eventually everything will even out by itself). This would clash with western lending vultures in disastrous ways, and perhaps explains the vast overspeculation in Thailand in the 90s and the resultant enormous IMF debt Thailand currently faces. But it's just a theory.

Thais living in Thailand, especially young, middle- to upper-class Thais living in Bangkok, now get bombarded with western television and movies. It's as if America (and bits of Europe) are coming to them. Every time I have a conversation with any Thai adult about Thai values, they never fail to mention their belief that there is a new generation of Thai youths breeding in Bangkok who are not nam jai and do not feel gadtanyuu towards their parents or others. The Thai adults predict that these children will grow to rebel against their parents and teachers like American teenagers do, upsetting the social order in a way which makes the adults sad. While this may be true, I have yet to meet such a youth. The Thai teenagers with whom I have interacted may sport piercings, colored spiky hair, or custom Power Rangers cell phone covers, but when it comes down to obeying their parents' grounding orders or planning for the folks moving in when they are older, they are still as gadtanyuu as Beaver Cleaver.

Here are some ways that Thai and western culture clashed in my own personal experience:

• Fortune Generates Pressure to Provide: Nobody in Thai society is asked to provide for another. They don't have to be—the value of nam jai is so strong that they want to provide and gain self-esteem in doing so.

  Bill has placed Nit in a unique position. Other people are slowly getting word that Nit now has someone taking care of her, and that that person is a farang. Bill has set up a slowly-drawing trust account, so Nit has enough to live comfortably but she is not rich, even by Thai standards. However, 100% of the Thai people in a small countryside town such as Nang Rong, and perhaps 95% of the people in Thailand, assume that all farangs are rich beyond their imagining, and they assume that Nit has access to significant resources now. Sometime soon, some relative or friend of Nit's will have a publicly visible financial crisis, and Nit will feel pressure to bail them out. Nobody will demand money or support from Nit. Instead, Nit will want to provide it because of her own self-esteem. If she does not provide and spread the wealth that people assume she has, nobody will confront her about it (because they wish to avoid confrontation) but they will think less of her, and this will make her feel ashamed.

  Ironically, it helps that Nit's mother and father are out of the picture, but Nit still has other relatives, and other peers such as her fellow students, teachers and mentors. Nit will have to be careful who she tells about her good fortune, and more importantly, Bill may need to prepare to be a provider for more than just Nit and her siblings! Does this mean that Bill is being "taken advantage of"? From a western perspective, yes: Bill offered to help Nit and her siblings, not Nit's distant relatives. From a Thai perspective, not at all: Bill, like everyone else, must have helped Nit out of his nam jai and so he must want to help Nit's relatives too. How will Bill ever get repaid for all these good deeds? From the Thai perspective, don't worry about it—it'll all work itself out somehow.

• When Marriage is Involved it can get much more complicated. Here's an example with which I am all too familiar.

  My ex-girlfriend Nang is a nature guide in Khao Yai National Park who is an expert in locating rare birds and orchids in the forest and who guides farangs every day. She lived and worked in the US for several years, is fluent in English, and, with her Thai-American host family, traveled to many countries. She knows the ways of the west and Thailand.

  Her family, however, lives in a tiny farming village outside of Nang Rong. The villagers there have seen a total of two farangs: sex tourists who met and eventually married bar girls in Pattaya whose families happened to live in this village. Amidst a sea of shanty wood and corrugated steel huts, both of the girls' families suddenly found themselves gifted with palatial 2-story concrete houses with tile floors and indoor toilet.

  What do you think the villagers thought about these families? Everyone in village knew exactly how this had come about, but they didn't say and they didn't care. The sex tourists and their wives were demonstrating nam jai by providing for their family. Their parents' faces were solidly intact. The sex tourists were welcome, honored guests and were lavished with attention and respect (out of gadtanyuu) just as any generous giver would be. The fact that the men were sex tourists and the women were prostitutes, which would be paramount and overriding in our American society (and would invalidate the merit of any benefit the men provided), has little or no bearing on whether or not the villagers consider the men, the women, or their parents to be good people.

  Secondly, ancient values are still strong (in the public face, anyway) in this rural corner of Thailand. Men and women keep their relationships secret (and supposedly platonic, which I do not believe for a second) until they are ready for marriage, at which point they introduce each other to their respective families and they get engaged. If the couple breaks up at this point, the woman gets the brunt: great shame befalls her and her family. Eventually, a dowry is exchanged and they get married.

  Enter unsuspecting me and my (at the time) girlfriend on our first visit! Her mother was overjoyed to meet me, not surprisingly. But, unlike the two bar girls, Nang did not ask me for money to build a house, and although the mother clearly wanted it, Nang didn't ask me to get married. Nang could see how much the parallels to the bar girls' situation disturbed me. I was interested in having a western-style relationship that was as equal as possible given our financial backgrounds, because it allowed me to sit comfortably on my western values and be confident that I was not "buying" my way into the relationship. I was interested in Nang because she was unusually self-confident and even sometimes rebellious in Thai society, freely mixing aspects of Thai culture with others she had been exposed to, and with her guiding and English skills, was capable of and interested in "doing very well on her own" without support from me or anyone else.

  To me, the issue of paramount importance to her village—being nam jai and supporting the family according to your means (and mine were assumed to be huge)—seemed like a dissonant deviation from those goals. Basically, I was not courageous enough to make the leap of faith and judge whether our relationship was "legitimate" using Thai standards such as nam jai, rather than the way I had been brought up to judge. My ex-girlfriend, however, was seemingly able to make that leap of faith and tried to accommodate me. For my sake, as she explained on multiple occasions, Nang specifically did not want to poison our relationship (from a western standpoint) by turning it into some kind of sugar daddy affair (again, a thoroughly western value judgment that is incompatible with nam jai). Based on that fact alone you might think our relationship had a chance. But things get more complicated when you factor in Nang's peers and extended family...

  When the house, and/or any other conspicuous signs of support which her mother might be able to display for the farming village, failed to materialize after a year, her mother seriously lost face in the eyes of the other villagers. She lost face because Nang (the daughter) and I (the farang son-in-law with lots of money) were not fulfilling our gadtanyuu obligation to dutifully secure a living for her mother (the aged parent) within our obvious means (again assumed to be huge because of me). This effect is multiplied in a small farming village like theirs, which still has a thriving communal system—when one farm harvests their fish pond, or has a bumper crop, or comes upon any kind of fortune, they share it with neighbors (I personally witnessed this on several occasions). The villagers have faith that the neighbors will return the favor the next time they have an emergency. In fact, as soon as Nang's immediate family got word of me, they started making ridiculously large purchases and other questionable investments, assuming (as would be proper in a society of people who aim to be as nam jai as possible) that Nang and I would bail them out if there was any problem (which, surprise surprise, there was).

  Her mother lost face on another grounds too. There was no engagement ceremony and no wedding, despite several attempts by various family members to set up fake ones for the public face, and this caused her shame. And, connecting back to the support issue, this also meant there was also no dowry (which, surprise surprise, is based on the perceived means of the groom).

  The fact that both of these pressures, which caused Nang's mother to lose face, were based on the villagers' unjustified assumptions about me is totally irrelevant to the issue at hand. The fact is that the pressures existed and it was the responsibility of Nang and I to relieve them in a way which saves face and avoids confrontation.

  It is only the strength of Nang's character and her self-confidence which allowed us to proceed with our relationship as long as we did. But eventually Nang's own gadtanyuu proved to be the more powerful force. She could simply not be happy knowing that her mother was losing face amongst her peers all the time, and I could also not make the leap of faith to be content being nam jai (buy the house, etc.) but also believe in the sincerity of our relationship. This was a case where we were both too stubbornly stuck to our different cultures to be compatible. In hindsight, given that Nang rarely visits home, we could have greatly delayed this problem by delaying our first visit to the farming village. For some reason, Nang didn't expect this problem when we first visited. Perhaps she had been away from home for so long that she forgot how the family and villagers would react to her bringing home a man. But nam jai and gadtanyuu would have surfaced in some form eventually.

Phanom Rung Festival

One reward for staying so long in Nang Rong was that I happened to be there for the yearly Phanom Rung festival, which was extra special this year (or extra pompous anyway) because the Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra decided to visit. It's unclear why he visited, but it might relate to the recent violent anti-Thai riots in the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh over alleged (but denied) Thai TV comments that Angkor Wat should really be part of Thailand, and subsequent border closings and other diplomatic scuffles between the two countries. It was unclear if Thaksin was appearing as a way of mending relationships, or as a way of gloating that the Thais still have Phanom Rung (an ancient outpost of the Angkor empire now deep inside Thai territory)!

Anyway the festival consisted of four full days of traditional Thai dance, elaborate and interesting Hindu ceremonies at the temple itself (which is a giant offering to Shiva) from the normally-invisible Thai Hindus, rock bands, floats, and some endless, nationally televised, parading processions of foofed-up socialite ladies in full makeup being carried on pillow chairs by equally dressed-down subservient looking men. With the TV finish, the parade had the definite feel of "who's who since you're not."

At night on two evenings they always have a "sound and light show," but apparently this year it was much bigger and fancier than usual. They placed theater lights all around the main temple and constructed giant bleachers for the audience, charging up to 1000B for a direct-on view (all sold out before the event started!) and 200B for the cheap seats on the side where they stuffed all the farang tourists who showed up. There was a professionally produced and (amazingly) high quality soundtrack and lots of actors in costumes playing out various legends, seemingly both Hindu and Buddhist but I couldn't really tell since it was all in Thai and I didn't understand a word of it. In the first scene there was a video projector which projected images of volcanic creation onto a huge canvas screen, which the crew doused with gasoline throughout the piece and which then burst into flames at the climaxing moment of the presentation. At several points they released little cylinder-shaped kites with candles inside, which gracefully floated past the ruins into the sky, except for one which got stuck on the very top of the principal prang! They also had huge fireworks in the sky and coming out of various parts of the temple.

I took some pictures for Kun Panna's use in later posters. Here's some of them:

Here was a Hindu ceremony set up inside the temple during the day. These worshippers went on for hours and hours in the direct sunlight:

Hindu Ceremony

Here's some scenes from the "stage" during the sound and light show:

Scenes from the Show

Scenes from the Show

Scenes from the Show

After the festival everyone went to the stage and got themselves photographed with the "stars." From the crowd it seemed like this part was at least as important as the show itself:

Photos after the Show

Photos after the Show