The more I live in Thailand, the more it reminds me of China. Morality down the toilet, unbelievable immaturity, selfishness, "face" above all else...the only difference is that here we have attacks with guns and grenades, in addition to knives. In China we are restricted to reading about knife attacks only, thank God.

How long have you been in China?

I remember 2 or 3 knife attacks from my time in Beijing....

"Face" is a global issue. When Westerners say "I wouldn't be seen dead wearing that", we are talking about face. However, face is elevated to whole other levels in Asia. No, Thailand is by no means worst, though the Thai lack of a sense of Queensberry rules, whether that be in terms of armaments or numbers, doesn't help. China is quite strong on face issues, likewise Japan (though, more likely to result in suicide on the part of the person who has lost face). Surely, the paradigm in these matters is the Indian Sub-Continent, with its honour killings and mutilations.

Post of the day!

The more I live in Thailand, the more it reminds me of China. Morality down the toilet, unbelievable immaturity, selfishness, "face" above all else...the only difference is that here we have attacks with guns and grenades, in addition to knives. In China we are restricted to reading about knife attacks only, thank God.

How long have you been in China?

I remember 2 or 3 knife attacks from my time in Beijing....

I was in China for 4 years. If you google (or baidu) "knife attack China", you'll come up with 2-3 attacks a day (and these are the ones reported). To make things worse, most of these are lethal and some of these are on kids.

Forget all you've read, learned, studied and observed. Disregard the daily news reports of extreme Thai violence over miniscule and petty issues. Thai culture is no different to the West. Thai society is no different to the West. Thais are not petty, they don't keep their emotions repressed until exploding, they can deal with losing confrontations and challenges in the same way most Westerners do.

Thanks Runamile.