What day were you born?
Ask this question of most Westerners and they will generally tell you the date and month, as in 23rd of September or 12th of July.
But in Thailand, if someone asks you what day you were born, chances are they want to know the day of the week. When this becomes clear, [...]

Popularity: 17% [?]

Understanding Thailand and Thai people, to some degree, necessitates an understanding of Buddhism. In my experience, the biggest driver of Thai culture is Buddhism. For example, most of the country’s most significant landmarks are temples (called wat in Thai).
Popularity: 13% [?]

Popularity: 13% [?]

Back in farangland, if I gave a girl a gold necklace, I would spend a lot of time choosing a design appropriate for her — delicate or heavy, intricate links or attractive pendant. When I gave it to her the girl would ‘ooh’ and ‘aah’ and say thank you with kisses & hugs, and usually [...]

Popularity: 29% [?]

Thai Names
Thai people have three names:

First Name
Last Name
Nickname

First Names & Nicknames
It’s possible that I was misled, but the story I got on nicknames was as follows:
Thai people take their children to the temple when they are 30 days old, where the monk gives them their first name. The name is chosen to be auspicious [...]

Popularity: 6% [?]

Monday night I took three Thai girls out to Tawandang on Rama III to celebrate a birthday. I had been to Tawandang at Intra Rama about 19 months ago, and the two venues are similar.
Seating capacity is around 1,600 people and the reports I get from my Thai friends who go there frequently is [...]

Popularity: 15% [?]

There is some interesting terminology here in Thailand that reflects some cultural realities that, while they are not unique to Thailand, certainly seem alien to my American and Australian egalitarian background.
In Thailand, the term Hi-So is a shortened version of high society. It describes someone who is rich (or at least well-to-do), attractive, fashionable and [...]

Popularity: 9% [?]

Photo is my friend Oi on our trip to Samui in 2005
One of the most frequent comments on my blog site is that people would like to know how bar girls and other single young Thai girls live.
This comment from from a reader was enlightening:
I’ve also been curious to see how the TGs/bar girls live. I’ve been [...]

Popularity: 16% [?]

Finally, after a year and a half, the house was finished and we were ready to move in. Building a house, from scratch, in Thailand is a real challenge that I would not recommend tackling. My wife handled most of the man-management and I must say that without her stabilizing influence, I would never have [...]

Popularity: 15% [?]

I have been embarrassed or found myself in embarrassing situations with regard to my innocent ignorance, innocent stupidity, or just simply my innocent weird sense of humour on far too many occasions to remember. Clanger would be an understatement, dropping a major bollock would be a more accurate phrase…

Popularity: 16% [?]

Stickman (Assimilation?) wrote in his newsletter on August 12 about a couple of westerners he knew who had assimilated into Thai society. He said that they seemed to be very happy and that he envied them. He also mentioned that even after living here many years he didn’t have any close Thai friends.
I’d like to [...]

Popularity: 14% [?]