Thai Superstitions Are Driving Me Nuts

[newsite12]

OK.

I started this topic a few days ago on koratfarang and it seemed to get a good response, so i will start it here and see how it goes.

Please keep it on-topic.

This is starting to drive me crazy. Up till now i have been very tolerant of it, but i am now starting to get a little more than humpty about it.

This could just be something that is confined to the immediate Thai family I am involved with, meaning my girlfriend and her family and friends. But there seems to be a very big superstition culture that basically dictates how they (and me) live their lives.

to just touch on two points among many..

I can not put my bed where the aircon hits it, I have to wait for the whole room to cool before i can get the benefit from it... this is a feng sui thing.

Secondly, i want to put some colour in the garden and want to fix some lattice to the wall and have some climbing roses, as well as some other beautiful flowers that i spotted. i have been told that i can't have either, because flowers with thorns or any plant that has spikes, will bring trouble to those that live in the house.

These are only 2 of many superstitious hindrances i have come across here.

i am in no way knocking the Thai culture, and for many months i soaked all this up with a smile on my face, but now these strange restrictions are starting to pile up and i am wondering why and how can all this have meaning.

I am used to living in a more carefree environment, where people have superstitions, but i never knew anyone who lived their lives by a code dictated by them.

Probably most reading this will not be of the same situation as me at this moment.

It would be interesting to hear what other members of the forum have to say on this.. What are the most absurd superstitions you have heard in LOS and which ones do you have to go along with (if any).

[mstribling]

I think they're funny.

I can't whistle for my dogs at night because my wife thinks I am calling ghosts.

Horse statues by the front gate because it is lucky for people born on Mondays.

Haven't heard the rose bush story. We have a rose garden.

Not superstitious but I was going to cut a rotten shrub out because it looked horrible.

The misuses said "no way, the leaves are delicious."

etc etc. The list goes on...

I think it is one of the things I enjoy living here the most.

[surayu]

Killing an animal in your land apparently brings bad luck to the people living in there (not to the killers).

One day i had this aunt of wifey coming over with some strange mixture of red colour, made every single workers which was building our house to stop, so she could put that red thing on their hand nails and hair, she asked me too but i had to decline it, i don't care how bad that refusal made me look to their eyes, god knows what the heck she put inside that red thing, perhaps dog's and chicken blood, so, no way!

Before we could start building up the house, an elderly man from the village had to come, make some strange calculations about the age of all the people present at that time in there, somehow something wasn't working out for him and some other people had to come to add to his numbers...oh dear! i thought they were Buddist over here, but looks more like Voo-Doo to me.

[mstribling]

Let me add. I'm sitting at Yamaha square writing this. dam_n Fino won't start.

I'm looking at bike and point out the new Mio 125 GTX.

Wife says people born on Monday's cannot drive a Ted motocy.

We also had some giant incense sticks that we were going to use in the aunts funeral. I had them in the trunk of the car. Wife told me to park on the street. Didn't want those things on our property.

I guess it's no stranger than a baptism.

I told her of farang supertitions and now she has adopted them as well.

[yermanee]

Hi there,

The lattice and roses seem a bit odd to me, especially if you consider that the rose is the national flower in Thailand, and above that it's very hard to find a garden that has no bougainville in it and these have extremely vicious thorns.

Maybe something local?

Yermanee

[surayu]

Maybe something local?

Maybe just SOMEONE local, which is well planning in advance, and knows that getting all those scratchs from the plants while climbing the external wall with all the OP items he just stole, might bring up some unwelcome questions and maybe make him loose a bit of face, not that the would be thief is ever going to be arrested or even remotely worried about such an almost impossible event....

[Kwasaki]

None affect me personally, I go along with some just to keep things happy.

Apart from the usual putting up your feet and pointing the soles of your feet at someone or something !! Wearing shoes in the house !! Talking bad about someone etc !! probably the worst of all for me is the crap they believe from fortune tellers !!

Here's some more I remember :-

1. The number of the day that is best for us to buy a car or a motorbike and getting it plastered with gold leaf and white powder when blessed by the Monk.

2. The day your born, I told the monk she likes to go and see I was born on a Saturday, he told her that was very good, but haven't work out what I was born on.

3. Looking for lottery numbers in the ground made by tree roots at 4:00am in the morning.

4. Getting married 3 times to my wife 1st with the Monks, 2nd with government official paper on a special number day and 3rd with her old ancestors in the grounds where they lived because it's lucky.

5. Our bed cannot cannot face certain directions, same goes for the start of stairways and front doors of the house.

6. The pictures of Buddha's have to be higher than ordinary pictures within the house.

7. Throwing dirt of burial grounds onto where people live will bring them bad luck.

That's all I can remember for the moment.

[yermanee]

Maybe something local?

Maybe just SOMEONE local, which is well planning in advance, and knows that getting all those scratchs from the plants while climbing the external wall with all the OP items he just stole, might bring up some unwelcome questions and maybe make him loose a bit of face, not that the would be thief is ever going to be arrested or even remotely worried about such an almost impossible event....

lol !

Except for that, in my many many years of being here I learned that Thai's have a tendency to explain personal dislikes as being local superstitions, to avoid confrontation, since they truly believe we don't know anyway.

yermanee

[BuckarooBanzai]

My wife's family likes to throw little wattled up numbered pieces of paper down tarantula holes to see which ones the critters throw out during the night. Great for magically selecting lottery numbers. Can't do that back where I come from! Thankfully, my wife is only superstitiously crazy about simpler things that don't impact me much.

[surayu]

5. Our bed cannot cannot face certain directions, same goes for the start of stairways and front doors of the house.

6. The pictures of Buddha's have to be higher than ordinary pictures within the house.

5. Yes i had something similar too, the builders say it was bad for our home to have the staircase facing the road and also the toilette door instead should face the road, needless to say i did the contrary of it and still happy with my choice

6. Sorry for the question, a bit of an OT, but which picture should be higher in the house to not to get REAL ripercussions, the one of the Buddha or the one of HIM ?

[h90]

giving the dog uncooked food will change it to a violent beast....

For any reason the dog loves me more than anyone else and old meat disappear mystically from the fridge...must be the same ghost who drank all the beer.......

[craigt3365]

One derogatory post and 2 replies have been deleted. Keep this civil, please!!!!! :jap:

[mstribling]

giving the dog uncooked food will change it to a violent beast....

For any reason the dog loves me more than anyone else and old meat disappear mystically from the fridge...must be the same ghost who drank all the beer.......

[taff33]

Mother-in-law 80+ couldn't sleep at night she said her dead husband (dead for about 40 years)was in the room with her,so she wanted the monks to come and get rid of the man,so I said ok get all your brothers and sisters together and pay for it (I know they wouldn't) that was about 2 years ago never heard no more about.

[Richb2004v2]

Thankfully this does not effect me at all. When I first came to Thailand I considered it quaint behavior. I now see it as moronic actions labeled and passed of as either cultural or traditional. It does nothing other than retard the population and ensure that much of the population remains in the past. If most of us encountered the same ideas in our own countries we would right the perpetrators off as whackos, but in Thailand we see it as somehow endearing.

[happyrobert]

When I built my home, the builder freaked because he was afraid I would not have the money to pay him, as I designed the house so the front and back doors lined up, the back door opened inward and the front outward - a big no-no, as it allows money to come in then go right back out.

Isn't that what money does anyway?

As for the AC, I wish the folks that manage the hotels I stay at believed this one - seems the air is always pointed at the bed!

[h90]

Mother-in-law 80+ couldn't sleep at night she said her dead husband (dead for about 40 years)was in the room with her,so she wanted the monks to come and get rid of the man,so I said ok get all your brothers and sisters together and pay for it (I know they wouldn't) that was about 2 years ago never heard no more about.

Hehehe you are superstitious that it brings bad luck if the farang pays all the time?

[Travel2003]

It surprised me alot when I started to learn about all the superstitions (is that a word?) here.

Now, I just smile, and try not to shake my head in disbelieaf.

If they want to believe it, then go ahead, as long as it will not interfere too much with my life.

Kind of reminds me about the 100s of issues I learned (all about bad luck) when I joined the navy many years ago.

The merchant fleet was not better.

An awfull lot of highly educated people back in the west seem to know for sure that ghosts, (extraterristial) aliens, etc, are among us all the time.

[richieudon]

The Irish are just as bad. I got a good beating for opening an umbrella in the house when I was young...!

I do like the one about not being able to get your hair cut on a Wednesday.... even after me asking why was the barber open??

[JurgenG]

Two people in my relatives are famous fortune tellers.

When they ask me if I need their advices, I politely decline.

it's just up to you.

Edited February 8, 2011 by JurgenG

[Mosha]

Deciding where to build, 1 spot was perfect. No we can't build there, wife's brother in law had bad luck when he had house there. So house was half way being built on another less perfect plot. The bad luck was the plonker was locked up for illegal logging

[bina]

black cats, ladders, broken mirrors, among the christian westerners;

among us: evil eye if u say someone's baby is pretty or cute (u have to say 'hamsa hamsa' the arabic for five, meaning 'hand' as in 'against the evil eye';; hang a blue glass eye bead and hand over cribs, or as necklace, or wristlet.... hang a hamsa on a wall by your front door or on the porch with or w/o blessings written in them (guilty, we have about five , all presents we received. i can send some to u also if u need )

explanation:

http://www.hamsaart.com/hamsa-kabbalah.html

u have cancer, lost your money, wife throws u out-- check your mezzuzza , maybe a letter got blurry and needs someone to fix it

dont step on cracks

i forgot why my duaghter throws salt over her shoulder, must be soemthing from america

add on to any of your kids' or other loved ones the name' chai' (meaning 'life', and the number 18)especially after surviving operation or major illness or car accident

wear three gold bracelets on left arm to keep kabbala energy from leaving body (ask modonna about that one) -i have a set also. makes a nice glinggling noise when pointing at people etc.

shall i list them all? and that is here, in my house among the non thai residents, fairly decently educated and science oriented-- as a matter of fact, my youngest daughter's beliefs she has absorbbed from her surroundings at school. we hae something here called 'geometria' which is part of the kabbala, u know, red strings on the wrist, blessed by the baba sali or who ever (google is your friend)...dont wear second hand clothes cause someone might have died in them (i dont care but many folks here wont take second hand clothes )

thai husband thinks my daughter and friends are nuts

and he cant understand why my kids wont eat shrimp or pork.

but he more or less believes in ghosts.

to answer previous question the Buddha statue/pictures are higher then everyone/everything in thailand . the head is the area for thinking and not lower /dirty like the feet, hence no pointing with feet... but that is politeness, not surperstition.

in our house: pic of the Buddha, next lower,framed pic of Their Majesties, next lower, pic of us, under that, pics of kids...

cant think why it bothers u any more then someone who prays in church or whatever.

here, a house blessing amulet to protect u from thai superstitions: hamsa hamsa hamsa , tvu tvu tvu (make a spitting motion three times after saying hamsa, while holding up your hand like u are telling someone to stop.:

bina

israel

ill stick with the thai ones, frankly, havent run in to too many among the men here apart from the usual not walking under socks and underwear on a clothes line, or stepping over my husband when he is in bed, no food taboos, no other major taboos about naming kids after dead or living people, clothes, maybe women are more superstitioius then men?

[IanForbes]

One derogatory post and 2 replies have been deleted. Keep this civil, please!!!!! :jap:

How could somebody possibly make a derogatory remark about this funny thread? I guess it takes all kinds to have a laugh.

Keep up the replies gang. They are hilarious and make for interesting reading.

It's one of the beauties of living in Thailand. All I know is that luck runs in cycles and you have to take advantage of it when you are riding a lucky streak and pull in your horns a bit when you luck runs sour.

[lannarebirth]

The OP may enjoy reading the works of Pira Sudham an Isaan raised Thai who writes in English. His works often make reference to the "crippled" or "maimed" minds of the people who grow up there. Presumably, the Thais higher up the food chain whose factories these people aspire to work in, like things just the way they are.

[DP25]

I don't mind Thai superstitions, at least they don't go door to door trying to tell you about it or stand on the street corner screaming about it

[Peppy]

The OP's inlaw's ideas about what kinds of things should be placed where sounds more like a Chinese thing than Thai--don't go knocking the Thais for what your wife's ancestors dragged over with them from the old country!

Of course the Thais do have plenty of whacky superstitions too--but I try not to get too deeply involved with the kinds of people who live their lives by these sorts of ideas no matter where I am. You can actually meet plenty of rational people here if you take your time looking for them.

[IanForbes]

I always wondered about the soldiers on both sides of the battle field in the Second World War in Europe. They were both praying to the same god to protect them and help them win the war. Talk about superstition!

[rott]

As the famous Chubby Chris Henderson (famous in Soi Yamato) once said:- Everything Thais eat is to ''give power'', everything they do is for ''good luck'', so when are they going to ask themselves how come they need to sleep 12 hours a day, and why do they live in tin shacks.

[SantiSuk]

A couple of days ago we had a party and all the 'old people' turned up to dress my arm and that of my father-in-law with string. It was the auspicious day to eat food and drink to give good luck and drive out ghosts for all the men in the family whose name starts with an 'S'. Women don't need to be done - apparently ghosts don't come to take women away.

[Kwasaki]

5. Our bed cannot cannot face certain directions, same goes for the start of stairways and front doors of the house.

6. The pictures of Buddha's have to be higher than ordinary pictures within the house.

5. Yes i had something similar too, the builders say it was bad for our home to have the staircase facing the road and also the toilette door instead should face the road, needless to say i did the contrary of it and still happy with my choice

6. Sorry for the question, a bit of an OT, but which picture should be higher in the house to not to get REAL ripercussions, the one of the Buddha or the one of HIM ?

The highest picture in the house was upstairs, my family " Coat of Arms " it was quickly relegated and had to be below a picture of His Majesty and the Queen.