Thai culture rests on three things a visitor meets on the first day: Theravada Buddhism, the monarchy, and an idea of social ease the Thais call kreng jai — the reluctance to impose on anyone, which is why open confrontation is so rare and so badly received.
Buddhism
About ninety-three per cent of Thais are Theravada Buddhists. There are around forty thousand temples, and most men still ordain as monks for a period — sometimes a week, sometimes a rainy season. At dawn monks walk the streets with alms bowls in the tak bat, and the food they are given is the day's meal; they eat nothing after noon.
A spirit house stands in the corner of almost every plot, from village yards to the forecourts of skyscrapers, with fresh flowers and a glass of red Fanta for the spirit displaced by the building.
Manners
- The wai — palms together, a slight bow — greets and thanks. The younger person offers it first.
- The head is the highest part of the body in every sense: never touch anyone's, not even a child's.
- The feet are the lowest. Do not point with them, do not put them on furniture, do not step over food or over a person.
- Shoes come off at the door of a temple, a house and many small shops.
- Losing your temper in public makes you lose face, not the other person.
Festivals
Songkran, 13 to 15 April, is the Thai new year. It began as the gentle pouring of scented water over the hands of elders and Buddha images; it is now three days of nationwide water fights, and nobody is exempt.
Loi Krathong, on the November full moon, sets tens of thousands of little banana-leaf rafts with a candle and an incense stick adrift on the rivers, carrying away the past year's misfortune. In Chiang Mai it coincides with Yi Peng, when paper lanterns go up into the sky at the same time.
Muay Thai
Muay Thai, the art of eight limbs — fists, elbows, knees and shins — is the national sport and much older than the ring. Every bout opens with the wai khru ram muay, a slow dance in which the fighter honours his teacher, performed to the sound of a reed pipe and drums.
Craft and colour
Thai silk was revived after the war and is woven above all in the north-east; the northern hill communities — Karen, Hmong, Akha, Lisu — weave, embroider and work silver in patterns of their own. Each day of the week has a colour: yellow belongs to Monday, the day King Bhumibol was born, which is why so much yellow appears on royal anniversaries.