Why Is It So Dirty Everywhere In Thailand?

[Datsun240Z]

my wife says that hot water is not used much because the weather is so hot, so it doesnt feel good. also, she says that many thai are laidback and dont want to clean toilet etc.

.....She says that many thai are not aware of basic hygiene. they just think about how to eat, how to get money for food, not bacteria.

I'm surprised to read your wife said that about many Thai not being aware of basic hygiene. Seems a little hard to believe, because I rarely come across a Thai with body odor even in a crowded market where many poor people are. Although I am frustrated there is so much litter in Thailand everywhere, my impression is the Thai themselves are quite clean hygiene-wise, especially compared to some other nationalities who bathe once a week whether they need it or not.

Regards.

I think you can say the Thai people tend to keep themselves very clean, wish is a lovely thing. But the enviroment they tend to care less....

[edgarfriendly]

excuse me ladies and gents,

can we please ignore the filth. and the questioning of our awesome 'hosts'

its not even really rotting, its fertilising the environment.

and it doesnt stink, its a unique local bouquet.

please could we all just point fingers at each other and pretend nothing matters?

thanks.

ef

[cdnvic]

why is it so dirty everywhere in Thailand? Some places they dont seem to clean ever, like many bathrooms. Whats up with this? Is the reason anything more than lack of knowledge about bacteria etc?

cheers,

Chr

Or a stronger resistance. Most western immune systems have been pampered, sometimes to excess over the years. If you look for pay toilets you find they are usually staffed and quite a lot cleaner.

One other issue is that paint is ridiculously expensive in Thailand. That makes the place look dirtier than it is because repainting anything is not high on the agenda of many Thais.

[Bobsyouruncle]

Errmmm...

Would the fact that Thailand is a third world country have anything to do with it?

[cdnvic]

Thailand the shining light of democracy in SE Asia. Well...perhaps it is. Which SE Asian nation is more democratic?

Yup. Every military coup is (eventually) followed by an election.

[doubleJ]

Thailand the shining light of democracy in SE Asia. Well...perhaps it is. Which SE Asian nation is more democratic?

Yup. Every military coup is (eventually) followed by an election.

Followed by a promised change of constitution, plenty of promises to 'eradicate the old excesses and visages of the past', plenty of courtroom drama and multiple changes of Prime Ministers.

And before the dust settles, another coup happens and we all see a x number of change in constitution, prime minister & folks in-charge.

[yabaaaa]

we have several comments here:

.asia is dirty, so why think about why thailand is dirty.

-my wife is a thai look alike that can say something about this.

-a song was made about a nite in bkk.

-stay at home, it solves the problem.

great thread.

Yes it is, it's someones very own perception!

As in: "Glass half full, half empty..."!

I just ha d an Indian Visitor, he stumbled all the time: "it's so clean, it's so clean, the waer, look evrerything is so clean! I think Thai people are very clean people!"

I suggest to get cured - got to India for therapy!

Yes this would surely be the "Thai" answer.

[yabaaaa]

I'd say bum gun (Thai) vs. smearing feces into your skin with toilet paper trumps more litter at the end of a local street and 'clean' street somewhere else. Not too many threads (even on the Thai forums) on that though because there are far fewer people who are disappointed/frustrated with their lives here.

Just hope your bum gun water is not infested with some nasty bacteria. Can you drink the water everywhere in Thailand yet?

[yabaaaa]

Thailand is not that dirty at all. The streets might be dusty because of the amount of people and cars and the trash is because of lack of rubbish bins and garbage trucks. All in all I would rather go into a MC donalds or fast food here than back in Australia. They really implement sanitization and cleaning. For all other dirty toilets its probably the "MAI PEN RAI" attitude

What a load of bull we are not talking about being dusty we talk about about rubbish thrown every were

Well I prefer my burger in OZ because every body has to wear gloves while handling food.

You ever go to the local markets here? How do they prepeare the food? With bare hands no water to wash and a minute ago they picked theyr noses. Have you ever seen a health inspector checking on all the food stores along the roads? I guess not

How often do people here get sick from food? Not often, worse case of food poisoning I know of personally in Thailand was my sister who got sick while staying at the Sheraton BKK, she said she would not eat out side the hotel as it was not clean but she got as sick as dog.

Generally once every time I come and I come twice a year for 3 months per time.

[imaneggspurt]

we have several comments here:

.asia is dirty, so why think about why thailand is dirty.

-my wife is a thai look alike that can say something about this.

-a song was made about a nite in bkk.

-stay at home, it solves the problem.

great thread.

Its a shame some posters have to mock, i suspect they came from one shithole to another and it seems normal to them, !,.in general i find thais above average in their general personal hygene, however some of their habits are a bit concerning, more so in the country where just about everything gets thrown outside on the floor it seems,

[imaneggspurt]

@ JR Texas: Why you have to post that picture, just ruined my day

You can report it

Or move it to the gay forum !

[philliphn]

They need to initiate a keep Thailand clean campaign. As well as a clean up Thailand campaign.

The trash does not magically appear in public some one deposits it their.

[imaneggspurt]

I must agree Thailand is dirty, not just talking about BKK or other big cities just adventure in some of the smaller towns and look around if I would be game and not worried about getting abused or shot I would take some pics in our soi to show you the rubbish piled up every where and nobody cares or give's a damm about it. Before I moved here my mate ask me " Why do you like to live in a pigs house" And he is a well travelled business man.

I wonder, when i see a nice house in an Isaan village, with marble tiles on the verandah, maybe even a swimming pool, possibly paid for by a Farang, but certainly a major investment in living comfort. To reach the marble tiled verandah, you have to step over/through piles of old plastic bags, squashed coke cans, old tires, small dead animals, and other household debris, plus an assortment of terminally mangy and flearidden domestic animals, not to mention the accumulation of animal s**t.

I could be convinced of the need to toss such stuff over into the neighbours' garden, but not to just leave it to fester on your own doorstep..... I know if I spent so much money on a nice house, i would feel obliged to keep the immediate vicinity clean - so that I could look at it every day without a rise in blood pressure.

Does Buddhist teaching help you to ignore material things like rotting rubbish?

I like this observation ,true, often we see a "palace " built by a farang on a dump,maybe thats the guy that anwsered " stay in and it wont bother you !"

[imaneggspurt]

yes i know. good thing this isnt serious. he he.

wrong, 'cause if you need someone else to get an opinion of a certain matter shows that you are not capable of one by YOURSELF.

have u lost your mind? a guy in this thread asked for my wife's opinion. please read the thread for the love of ....

dont feed the trolls ,or show any weakness, they will push you ,,

[JR Texas]

@ JR Texas: Why you have to post that picture, just ruined my day

For the record, I did not post it and it was part of another poster's post........I was just responding.

[chrgrims]

This is the first thread i started on this subforum, and i am not planning to make any more. If you guys want a forum like this its fine by me, but i wont be involved.

take care, i will be keeping to the other subforums.

[RobotTeacher]

Yep, pollution and lack of attention to waste disposal are common in many Asian countries. If it's not your toilet or place, you don't care about it. If it's your neighbors property, throw trash on it with the streets being fair game for waste disposal as rank odors of raw sewage waft in the air. I can't get over how neighbors will stuff trash under your porch, patio, steps, or veranda. I went to Korea and it's not much different other than having more flashy lights, technology, money, and bling fashion such as silver metal looking business suits and rhinestone neckties. The thing to understand about Asia is before Western style trash and chemicals came, it was OK to just throw your waste back into the environment as it was all natural which presented few problems for thousands of years and the culture hasn't yet developed to consider the effects of plastics and chemicals and that they require special handling that costs time and money.

In Laos where long distance buses stop for breaks, it's just piles of plastics trash on both sides of the road from the tourists food and water. One stop had a toilet behind a shop where you paid a kid a few coins who was cleaning pots and pans in the mud right in front of his set of 5 latrines with a tied up monkey over head on a tree branch. Talk about gross. I decided I was going on a fasting diet that day even though pizza and bread was for sale in front of the shop. Only bottled water, potato ships, and granola bars are a safe bet in many situations like this, but then the plastic end up on the ground as there is not adequate trash removal and disposal services or they care not to pay for any. This sort of thing just goes on all over Asia unless your in places where rich people such as executives live, work, eat, and shop. And that waste probably ends up in the river such as in Bangkok where you see trash and sewage floating in the murky dirty water.

I feel if they sell Western style things to tourists, they can afford a trash can and trash removal without resorting to the river as a free and easy way to dispose of it. If they can afford plastic things for themselves, they can afford the pay per bag service rather than my selfish neighbors having a stinky fire screwing up my air who also throw their plastic jugs, tires, and bulky items in the rivers. They'll go BBQ and camp near the river and just throw their waste in it with no regard to pack out what they packed in. Again, trash cans are hard to find just about anywhere you go in the East so people throw it on the ground or burn it to avoid buying pay per bag trash removal. All too common in Asian countries. The rivers are also fair game for bulky items and god only knows what else such as spent oil. This has been a real downer for me about Asia.

Edited July 5, 2009 by RobotTeacher

[cdnvic]

So far as food poisonings go, I've only ever gotten sick once in Thailand, and that was after breakfast at some dungheap in Patong run by an Englishman. I wish I could say the same about eating in Canada where despite quite strict health regulations for restaurants, I get a queezy stomach after eating out almost every couple of months. I'm not sure if my resistances are higher in Thailand or if years of over-sanitizing has made bacteria in the west more resistant.

[glegolo]

why is it so dirty everywhere in Thailand? Some places they dont seem to clean ever, like many bathrooms. Whats up with this? Is the reason anything more than lack of knowledge about bacteria etc?

cheers,

----------------------------------------------------

I live up in Chaiyaphum, and my girlfriends brother in law says to me on a direct question, why his front yard is so god dam_n

dirty shitty and unclean, there are plastic bags, woodenstuff and dogfood and garbage just thrown out there, and the smell

is great!! He says quote - " This is the Thai way of living".

They just dont care. This brother in Law he is a good and wellknown teacher, educated and should accordingly have some

understanding of cleaning up etc. But No, he just dont care. he drinks friday, saturday and all sunday every dam_n week, and

rest of the weeks he works.

But there are no cleaning whatsoever, and this goes for his wife to. This is NOT an exception, this is a rule up here in Isaan,

there are dirty dirty and smelly. I am sorry to say.

But on the other hand, if it helps, Thais up here are absolutely wonderful to be arround, and I have a great life, but long long way

from the dirt in a Village.

Glegolo

[Birdman]

'imaneggspurt': dont feed the trolls ,or show any weakness, they will push you ,,

Hey imaneggspurt, you forget to mention my pushing response:

yes i know. good thing this isnt serious. he he.

wrong, 'cause if you need someone else to get an opinion of a certain matter shows that you are not capable of one by YOURSELF.

have u lost your mind? a guy in this thread asked for my wife's opinion. please read the thread for the love of ....

...apologizes for skipping that.

[LawnGnome]

Lack of education - produces people who live mostly subsistence (hand to mouth), which means that they spend most of their time and energy devoted to earning enough money to live. Only after the general standard of living for the majority of Thais improve, will you see (serious) attention paid to issues like this.

Government stability will help as well. Thankfully, we have a politically savvy PM and ruling party, and they should be around enough to provide stability, while the world economy rights itself.

[RobotTeacher]

`

Edited July 5, 2009 by RobotTeacher

[chrgrims]

yes i know. good thing this isnt serious. he he.

wrong, 'cause if you need someone else to get an opinion of a certain matter shows that you are not capable of one by YOURSELF.

have u lost your mind? a guy in this thread asked for my wife's opinion. please read the thread for the love of ....

...apologizes for skipping that.

just for the record, this is not the reason for my disinterest. The thread has some good answers now, but it was pure nonsense in the beginning. There seems to be a lot of underlying things that determine how people respond, maybe they think some are racist or anti-thai. And when i responded with sarcasm I was accused of being fascist-like, and not one person came into my defence. There must be a differentiation between using the tools of language and pure indecency on a forum. I was also accused by another to be very bad to thais, especially my wife, for not asking her my question (which i had done, but the poster didnt care to ask). if you guys want a good forum, you really need to think about what you are doing, and why.

Edited July 5, 2009 by chrgrims

[reallyok]

They need to initiate a keep Thailand clean campaign. As well as a clean up Thailand campaign.

The trash does not magically appear in public some one deposits it their.

In my opinion (maybe mine only) Thais are generally very prone to dumping rubbish anywhere it suits them, and other Thais appear not to see it.

I am not really sure wether they are ignorant with respect to rubbish and the enviroment or wether its all about 'saving face' and we all know to what lengths they will go to deny ! and blame others.

I recently read about a high government official on Phuket who was lecturing the fact that fish and other marine life were practably non-existant, blaming it on pollution etc., he was carrying out a...... Quote "age old" practice of putting natural fertilizer balls into the foreshore mud. This presumably will increase the growth and creation of more marine animals !

Nothing was mention or even given a thought to the fact that the locals scour the foreshore collecting crabs and other marine life about the size of a peanut by the bucket full................Bloody hel_l, of course there are no large marine life left !

He said that besides placing the fertilizer balls, they had to get the tourists ( probably meaning farang ) to stop dumping thrash.

A typical face saving exercise if ever i heard of one.

On Samui they have an annual beach clean up. and guess who does the beach front cleaning.................You got it !

Local farang business persons and their friends, certainly not locals.

[Datsun240Z]

Nothing can top my room

[reallyok]

Lack of education - produces people who live mostly subsistence (hand to mouth), which means that they spend most of their time and energy devoted to earning enough money to live. Only after the general standard of living for the majority of Thais improve, will you see (serious) attention paid to issues like this.

Government stability will help as well. Thankfully, we have a politically savvy PM and ruling party, and they should be around enough to provide stability, while the world economy rights itself.

There is no doubt about it. Without a strong leader, Thailand and its cities will always be grotty and dirty !

Back in the late 50's i was a young teenager serving in the British armed forces in Singapore (and Malaysia)

Back in those days Singapore was also grotty and dirty something like Bangkok. And then along came Lee Kwan Yew.

When i went back in the 80's it was a completely different city, and is now the beautiful clean and vibrant city we see today.

I am sure this is because of Lee Kwan Yew...........well done and congratulations to him, but where will such a man as him come from in Thailand, especially with this stupid face saving attitude that controls the population.

[aussimike]

hehe. i just might do that. .

btw, I realized just now i am mistaken. Thailand is clean, my wife is african and i love abba.

Perhaps some of the OP never really notice the dust and grim - spending most of their time in bars or in net cafes - or home on their computers they never get a real chance to really see what sort of conditions surround us - even my educated middle class thai friends make excuses to me about the general state of maintaining cleanliness in the country but i must admit efforts made - has anyone here ever seen the piles of rubbish in the streets surrounding JJ market after the weekend - leaving the lowely paid street sweepers to clean up-- what ever happened to people using rubbish bins or do they think the land below them is for the purpose of dropping rubbish.

best thing this country can do is to ban plastic bags - will go a long way to cleaning the place up -- as for the dust -- well i just live with it - no option -- spend hours sundays cleaning my apartment - pity some of the OP here something constructive or polite to say -- dont like the comment about your THAI LOOK ALIKE WIFE - blood rude -- wonder what his wife looks like - a khwai perhaps

[MaiChai]

Thais don't have the 'tidyness bug' that we westerners have. Sometimes I think I am going to go nuts running round managing the household, picking up things just dropped by the kids/gf and putting them in the right place. Collecting up the washing, hanging out the laundry, etc, etc. Thais don't think like this; live for the moment. The irony is the Thai outward appearance is important, whether its the physical look or the car you drive. With the westerner we are less concerned about our outward appearance. The two mindsets are different and can never come together! So you and the teerak will never agree or see eye to eye

[loong]

Lack of education - produces people who live mostly subsistence (hand to mouth), which means that they spend most of their time and energy devoted to earning enough money to live.........................................

Yes, but I find it strange that these same people produce mountains of discarded packaging from relatively expensive snacks and drinks.

[Garry9999]

"Why Is It So Dirty Everywhere In Thailand?"

The question should be "Why Is It So Dirty Everywhere In The World?"

Here's a recent photo from Tasmania, Australia, it's a roadside rest area, beer bottles, cigarette packets, plastics everywhere.

Why do so many posters single out problems in Thailand, when their own countries have the same problems?

PS - It's not dirty everywhere in Thailand.