Recently, my parents came to visit and we went to visit some awesome places here in Thailand and I got to tell and show them all about Thai culture. There were a couple of times that they had some misconceptions about Thailand and Thai people, just like many Peace Corps volunteers did before they arrived and many people around the world do. This is not uncommon and I thought I’d share some of the common misconceptions about Thailand and Thai people.
I thought in Thailand, people eat their food with chopsticks.
Nope, or at least, not quite. Sometimes we use chopsticks, like when we eat guoi dtiao, or a noodle soup and it’s paired with an Asian table spoon. Or at big events there’s often a big, multi-course Chinese style feast and we use chopsticks at those meals.
But typically, Thai eat with a fork and spoon. However, it’s mostly inappropriate to put a fork in your mouth, it’s only used to push food onto your spoon. This is super efficient and it’s a hard habit to break. If it’s not a spoon and fork, then it would be just an Asian-style table spoon to eat the rice in your bowl and to scoop out bite by bite the things you eat from the communal dishes.
In Isaan, the northeast where I live, lots of sticky rice is eaten, which requires no utensils – just grab a chunk, roll it in a ball and dip and grab from the communal dishes to pop in your mouth.
With all of the beaches in Thailand, I thought they would go swimming a lot and wear bathing suits.
The vast majority of Thais do not live near a beach. Additionally, Thai beauty standards uphold and glorify lighter skin, so many Thais and especially Thai women do not like to spend time out in the sun. If you go to a beach that is frequented by Thai tourists, expect to find a ceiling of umbrellas.
This, combined with the fact that Thailand is in fact a very modest society (with a deeply ingrained patriarchy and fully-believed, victim-blaming rape culture, as evidenced by the General’s comments that ugly women in bikinis don’t need to worry), Thais do not wear bathing suits at the beach. They will go and play in the surf fully clothed, if they get in the water at all. Many Thai people do not know how to swim and are afraid to go in the water, especially the ocean.
Thailand is pretty well known internationally for being a sex tourism destination, I thought they would have a lot more open discourse about such things.
Thai people know that Westerners come to Thailand to have sex with the women here or to find a much younger wife. They see it, just like I and other Peace Corps volunteers see it. And it’s embarrassing. From a traditional Thai cultural standpoint, it is way outside the norms.
It’s unusual to see Thai people holding hands, let alone kiss in public, and to know that that is something that Thailand has a reputation for is embarrassing. To talk about such an embarrassing topic would be to break face in a very significant way. To acknowledge a problem or a mistake would bring shame.
Many, many teens and young adults are completely unaware of any kind of sexual education, which is a focus of the Peace Corps Youth in Development program here. Which is why Khun Mechai was such a revolutionary, to talk about family planning and birth control in such a public way and to acknowledge that brothels are Ground Zero for any public health initiative related to STIs. Long story short, sex is not talked about here.
The Thai language is all just one syllable words, right?
Thai sounds like it’s made up of one syllable words because many of the ending sounds for syllables are not aspirated, or kind of swallowed. You make your tongue and mouth form of saying a /t/ or a /k/ but you stop yourself short from actually voicing them. Combine that with vowels that are short, meaning you voice them for a short amount of time, and the language can and does sound very choppy.
But that doesn’t mean there aren’t multi-syllabic words. For example: university is มหาวิทยาลัย, or ma-haa wit-ta-yaa-lai, which has six syllables.
I thought all Thai food was spicy and that all Thais can eat spicy foods.
Thankfully for me (because I can only eat mildly spicy things), not all Thai food is spicy. Pad thai, pad see ew, khao pad, guoi dtiao are all some dishes that I eat that I can think of off the top of my head that are not made spicy initially.
Often at restaurants, these dishes (with the exception of khao pad or fried rice) will come with a condiment caddy that had sugar, chili flakes, vinegar and fish sauce for each person to flavor to their liking. This is how I discovered that even with my spice tolerance set to mild, I can still eat and enjoy spicier foods than my co-teacher. So not all Thais can eat spicy foods!