Culture

Buddhism is the operating system

Roughly nine in ten Thais are Theravada Buddhists, and the religion is less a Sunday activity than the grammar of ordinary life. Merit-making (tham bun) explains the woman releasing birds outside a temple, the 6am alms round on your soi, the spirit house in the corner of a 7-Eleven car park, and the garlands on the dashboard of your taxi. Monks are not clergy in the Western sense — many ordain temporarily, some for a single rains retreat — but they hold real social rank, which is why the priority seats at the front of a BTS carriage are for monks and why a woman should place an offering on a cloth or in a bowl rather than hand it over directly.

The practical upshot for a visitor is small and easy: give monks physical space, do not sit higher than a Buddha image, and treat a temple as somewhere people are actually praying. Do that and you have cleared 90 per cent of the bar.

Four regions, four cultures

Central Thailand is the Thailand of the textbooks: the Chao Phraya delta, the old capitals of Ayutthaya and Sukhothai, standard Thai, and the coconut-milk curries most people abroad think of as Thai food. Isaan, the north-east and by far the most populous region, is culturally Lao — its own dialect, sticky rice eaten by hand, mor lam music, rocket festivals and a diaspora that staffs half of Bangkok. Lanna, the north, was an independent kingdom until the late nineteenth century and still shows it in temple rooflines, its own script on temple signage, and a calendar of festivals that runs on different logic. The deep South — Pattani, Yala, Narathiwat, and Songkhla’s hinterland — is majority Malay Muslim, with mosques instead of wat, Yawi spoken at home and a cuisine built on turmeric and fresh chilli.

Layered across all of it is the Sino-Thai story: Chinese migrant families who arrived over centuries, took Thai surnames, built the shophouse commerce of every provincial capital, and gave the country its vegetarian festival, its Hokkien-inflected snacks and much of its business class. Start with who lives where and why it matters, then read a place that wears its mixture openly: Songkhla’s Sino-Portuguese old town or Phitsanulok, the Central-plains junction town most foreigners only see from a train window.

Temples: the rules that actually matter

Cover shoulders and knees, take your shoes off before stepping into any building, and do not point your feet at a Buddha image or a monk — that is the whole of the law, and the rest is manners. Sarongs are usually available at the big sites if you turn up in shorts, sometimes for a small deposit. Photography is almost always fine outside and usually fine inside; what is not fine is climbing on a ruin for a photograph, turning your back to a principal image for a selfie, or posing with a Buddha image in a way you would not pose in a church. Our eight things to know before entering a Thai temple is the two-minute version.

Once you are comfortable, the interesting temples are rarely the famous ones. Ayutthaya rewards a half-day on a bicycle and an understanding of why the ruins look decapitated. Sala Keoku in Nong Khai is not a temple at all but a concrete fever dream of Buddhist and Hindu cosmology built by a visionary who fled Laos — and it is one of the strangest, best things in the country.

The festival year

Thailand runs on two calendars at once, and the good festivals sit on the lunar one, which is why the dates move. Songkran (13–15 April, fixed) is Thai New Year: nationally a water fight, domestically a family holiday when half of Bangkok goes home to Isaan and the north. Loy Krathong falls on the twelfth lunar full moon, usually November, and overlaps in Chiang Mai with Yi Peng and its lanterns. The Vegetarian Festival in Phuket and Trang is a Sino-Thai nine-day observance with the piercing processions the tabloids love. Yasothon fires homemade rockets into the sky in May; Surin parades elephants in November; Bangkok’s Chinatown does Lunar New Year properly.

If a festival is the reason for your trip, book transport and rooms early and check the date rather than assuming — our festival and public-holiday calendar lists what is happening, where, and which dates are still provisional, and it tells you which public holidays close banks and government offices.

Face, hierarchy and the things nobody explains

Three words do most of the work. Kreng jai is the reluctance to impose on someone — it is why a hotel receptionist may say yes to something they cannot deliver, and why a direct complaint often gets you less than a patient, smiling one. Jai yen, a cool heart, is the social ideal: raising your voice in public loses you the argument, whatever the merits. Sanuk is the expectation that a task should contain some pleasure, which is why work here often looks more sociable than it does at home.

The wai — palms together, a slight bow — is returned rather than initiated by juniors, and nobody expects a visitor to get the height right; a small wai in response to one is plenty, and you do not wai children or service staff. Two hard limits worth knowing plainly: the head is the most respected part of the body and the feet the least, so no ruffling hair and no feet on seats or pointed at people; and criticism of the monarchy is a criminal matter in Thailand under lese-majeste law, prosecuted seriously and applying to foreigners. It is not a subject to explore aloud, online from within the country, or with new Thai acquaintances.

Culture you can actually attend

Reading about a culture is thinner than turning up to it, and Thailand makes turning up easy. A Muay Thai card in Bangkok is the country’s national sport with a live band, a betting section and pre-fight ritual — and the stadium you pick changes the experience entirely. Night markets are where provincial Thailand socialises: Khon Kaen after dark is Isaan’s real capital, and Nakhon Si Thammarat is a southern food scene that tourists route straight past on the way to the islands. If you have a weekend from Bangkok, Hua Hin is the royal-resort version and Koh Samet the beach version, both without the flight.