RamenRaven

Thais are always shocked by Westerners' pack rat mentalities. Especially the need to stock up on physical goods and food. A typical American, Canadian, or Australian family might get a big carload of groceries worth at least $200 every week or so. Even when Thais have money, they just don't do that. They prefer go out to get small portions of food in plastic bags from street vendors everyday. Spending time to leisurely buy food from different vendors every single day is a waste of time for Westerners. Time is money for us Westerners. It's also because for North Americans and Australians, grocery stores take time to drive to in spread-out suburban areas, and you can't find street vendors selling som tam on every suburban street corner. But my pack rat mentality makes no sense to most Thais, no matter how much I explain to them that I prefer to get a huge Makro Click delivery and get it all done with in order to save time. Their response: "Are you going to eat all that, or are you going to sell all that? Are you opening up a new grocery store?"

What does LOS stand for? Land of Smiles Smoke Enjoy the perpetual BBQ party! Here it's just grass and dead trees and maybe occasionally some plastic. In China, it's factory chemicals. In Poland, it's thick, black coal. In Indonesia, peat bogs. So consider yourself lucky.

In practice, it's 95% animism here, even though it's all labeled as Buddhism. Actual Buddhism involving nirvana, non-attachment, the eightfold path, and other Buddhist concepts are limited to more advanced monks. Most people make offerings to spirits so that they can get rich. They will give you blank stares if you talk to them about how true Buddhism is about non-attachment to material objects.

Welcome to Thailand. Pyromania is a fact of life here and can be difficult to stop. The usual solution: face mask, air purifier, smile, and move on, because we can't control it. But if you're really annoyed, you can secretly get a lot of other neighbors to talk with the "puu yai baan" (village elder), who would hopefully try to gently negotiate with the neighbor. It might work half of the time. Keep it calm and gentle and don't do anything to make the other party lose face. Because of the complexities involved, most Thais choose not to complain.

The irony is that there are many threads here about how farangs, including the women, typically like to engage in intellectually deeper conversations and have longer-lasting, more intense sex drives and are more willing to experiment. It all depends on who you are talking to.

Isn't that why many Westerners have mutual funds, stocks, bonds, crypto, and all kinds of funny things that ordinary working-class Thais have never even heard of? Because let's face it, some farangs do have more money than they know what to do with!

Your friend is being incredibly respectful. Most Thais do not ask permission from their neighbors to burn. They just burn anything they want, anytime. Most neighbors just get upset about their laundry smelling bad, rather than the PM 2.5. But just put on a face mask and it's life as usual. That's what they're used for in Thailand: smoke, not (just) for COVID.

You fellas must have been burned by women pretty badly. There are also other forum members here who report being happily married to their wives for 10, 20, 30, 40+ years.

If that's your definition of pyromaniac, then most Thais should be pyromaniacs except for a select few upper-middle Thais who live in downtown high-rise condos and are thus out of touch with the burning reality around them. Thanks to nationwide pyromania, northern Thailand and Isan are now incredibly smoky as usual.

Sweat, drink water, splash water on your head. Sweat, get more water, shower. Repeat.

That's like saying "rent, don't buy." Not always true. Depends on your situation. Renting is better for some. Buying is better for some. Some can live with either choice. There's no one size fits all solution.

This question would make no sense to a typical Thai Buddhist. I'd say that they're agnostic animists. There is no concept of an all-powerful God who punishes churchgoers if they stray off into heresy. There's just an interconnected web of life that is inhabited by countless spirits. So for those of us who have gone local, it's safe to say that this question no longer makes any sense to us.

Funeral concert Just another carnival, most likely few if any tears

Send all the horror stories about Thai women on this forum to the bloke. Then he'll realize how much better his farang wife really is!

I know that Thais don't like acting out in public, but it's that no one seems to be genuinely upset at the funerals that I went to. I don't get that part. When Thais are upset, they show that they're visibly upset by being silent and ignoring people around them. That didn't happen. There's something about the Thai Buddhist perspective on life, the elderly, and death that is very radically different from what we're used to in the West.

If it's a violent death, then yes. But "just another elderly village person passing away" does not seem to generate tears. That would be unusual in the West, and typical Westerners might think you're a cold-blooded monster if you act like it's just another normal day, and talk about delicious som tam while your mother's burning body is spewing smoke everywhere.

At funerals, I occasionally heard people saying very calmly, "May you go up to heaven and move on to your next life." I don't think that Thais do not value human life. It's that they have a different perspective on life and react differently. Another thing is that public display of strong emotions is frowned upon in Thailand. Public drama and histrionics are frowned upon. Everything is masked by poker faces and Thai-style smiles that are meant to show deference rather than happiness. You can't tell what they're really feeling deep down inside.

Russians typically stick to the beach-type tourist traps in Pattaya and Phuket. They don't enjoy going off the beaten path. You almost never find them in the interior north or in Isan. It's typically NW Europeans who go there.

Slim? No way. Every time I see a Thai woman washing or cooking, it's always a short, stocky woman with big, fat arms and calves. The slim delicate ones are usually playing with their phones and don't do much physical work.

Outside of farang countries, a loan is often a euphemism for a gift. Always expect a loan to be something that you might not get back and are comfortable with losing forever. It should always be surplus money that you don't know what to do with. Otherwise, don't bother lending.

2015-2019 were definitely the years of overtourism in Thailand. Let's hope that things don't get back to this. Thais are resilient. They always just find something else to do. It's not like the US where people call the cops on illegal street vendors all the time, so the only people doing street vending are typically undocumented migrants. Everyone else either has to survive on welfare or become homeless.

UPS Express. Flat fee for one envelope is around 1.800 baht. The IRS recommends using UPS, FedEx, and DHL.

Because farang countries are known for taxing everything. Thais are shocked when I tell them about how farang governments tax everything they can think of. Farangs are afraid to go back to their home countries for extended periods of time, or else they'd be taxed. But for self-employed / informal sector Thais: "Tax? What's that?" Few Thais who are not employed in the formal sector actually pay taxes. The government just doesn't seem to care. The only "tax" that you need to be aware of is that Thai banks can charge incoming transfer fees. I got charged these rates by Siam Commercial Bank just this month since I sent money via Moneygram (better rates and lower fees, even with SCB fees) instead of Wise: 200,000 baht transfer - 300 baht fee 100,000 baht transfer - 200 baht fee 50,000 baht transfer - 150 baht fee

That's the norm all over Thailand. Give them a small plate of food, and you'll see almost always see some bits left over. They might not eat some of the veggies, or decide that they don't want to eat all the rice. Every time you walk into a restaurant, you'll see plates with food left in them after the customers leave. It's unusual to see plates completely cleaned out with not a single grain of rice or bit of veggie remaining. That's how I clean out my plate: not a single scrap or morsel at all. In Thailand, if you see a plate as empty as that, you can tell that they're either foreigners or are Thais with different upbringings, perhaps raised abroad or in ethnic Chinese families. That's why I'm careful with my plates of food when I'm at restaurants. "No, I'm not finished yet!" If you go off to take a short bathroom break and the plate is 1/3 full, the restaurant might assume that you're already finished with your food. I always have to tell them - not finished yet, I'll be back shortly!

Thailand is a big breadbasket and has an agricultural surplus. In both rural and urban areas, people usually have food that they don't finish and throw it to the dogs. Food is cheap even by their standards. In fact, Thais are often surprised when I tell them about what food insecurity can be like in Western countries. When eating with a group of Thais, I'm always the only person who finishes every single little morsel and cleans out every grain of rice. Typically no one notices or cares, but occasionally they might ask if I would like some more food when they seen an empty plate. But the Burmese don't throw away food as often.