[junkhouse]

1) Honesty-Integrity

Above all else, I appreciate honesty and integrity in my close friends and my spouse. As most of you know, these traits are hard to find in LOS, perhaps because they are also related to the important issue of face and the significance of duplicity common in Thai society. While there is also plenty of dishonesty and lack of integrity in my own culture, what I am discussing here is the way in which these actions are manifested in Thailand and the rationalization and inability to accept truth when it conflicts with other important issues such as face. This is the most difficult portion of the paper to write, as there are so many examples I could discuss and so many ways in which the Thai can be seen by farang as dishonest. I don’t think that there are many more divergent ways of distinguishing among Thai and farang than how we view honesty. There are few Thais in whom I can place my trust or rely on.

Part of the problem is that Thais try and accommodate every one with whom they come in contact and perhaps because they are always in search of their own identity, they try hard to be all things to all people. This is very different from the NW European culture that I grew up in, which suggests that compromising your integrity for the sake of others is tantamount to making a pact with the devil, and there are clear firm lines of demarcation between right and wrong and honest and dishonest behavior.

In spite of its Buddhist basis that alludes a strong moral ethic, in practice Thai culture has been very lenient in condemning actions that may seem incongruous with the religion. Right and wrong is certainly a matter of interpretation and there are few easy hard-and-fast rules that apply. Everything is transient and everything is flexible. More appropriate to this section, however, is that the Thai try very hard to be all things to all people. They befriend everyone with the goal that they can play one group off against the other as the need arises. WWII is a good example, while officially at war with the allied powers, the Thai ambassador to the US declined to deliver the formal declaration of war and instead helped to support the Thai anti-Japanese effort to fight the Japanese. In other words, the Thai want it both ways, they choose to play both sides of the game because they want to be on the winning side. The morals or ethics of the situation are really irrelevant because it is more important to be on the winning side. Read up on what happened after WWII, what did the Thai do? This is why the Nana Hotel is always full. Never place your trust or faith in the individual to come through, but rather befriend all and you maximize your chances.

One of the things that really annoys me about Thai ‘friends’ is that they are only your friends when things are going well, while in bad times, they will desert you for the other side. Are these friends? Thai ‘friends’ often ask me to do some sort of favor inferring that I am the only one whom they have taken into their confidence or who they have asked. Many years of experience with these situations has taught me that it is never the case that I have been the only one they ask the favor of. When a Thai asks a favor of you, it is nothing special; basically they have asked several people hoping that one of them will come through. To many Westerners this seems like a breach of trust as our culture teaches us not to be greedy when asking favors and if we do ask we must really be in need. In addition, if we say yes, then our reputation is on the line. For me, this situation combines the importance of trust-integrity with reliability, which is important among friends and paramount in a spouse; failing to follow through on this type of agreement signifies unreliability and lack of trust. Unfortunately, it does not have the same connotation in Thai, who for a variety of reasons will commonly breech this type of agreement. To me, this breech is another form of unscrupulous behavior by a duplicitous individual, but that is not how most Thais will view the situation. They have an impressive ability to rationalize actions that seem to Westerners to be in contradiction with their cultural - ethical system.

Thais are particularly good at using their skills to mislead or deceive others, especially us farang; and often times we are either too ignorant, too blind, too stupid to see what is happening, or just simply in denial. I think one of the major concerns any Westerner should have when marrying a Thai is to determine why she is marrying you, love, economic gain, no other options, etc. There is no way to tell what her motives truly are before marriage; in fact I would go so far as to say that she probably has many motives for marrying you, and is just waiting to see which opportunities present themselves. This statement shouldn’t be seen as necessarily something negative, as all women probably have many reasons for marrying a particular person, but given the basic view of honesty in Thai society, the lack of remorse, and the exceptional ability to rationalize unscrupulous acts, the potential for dishonesty, manipulation, and deceit is very high.

The Thai seem to think that they will never be caught in a lie and even if they do they believe that they can either sweet talk their way out of the situation or their countrymen will take note of the lie but try gloss over the situation, once they both realize that the lie has been caught, in order to help the perpetrator from losing face. Because this type of recognition is not present when dealing with a farang, or it is not a concern, the Thai are very willing to take their chances to see if you, a farang, can catch them. If you don’t catch them in the deceit, then no harm done! If you do think you have caught them, rather than fess (face) up to the indiscretion, they will do all in their power to find a way out of it, by fabricating an even bigger lie. Thais have, or pay little attention to the ethics of these situations as we do in the West, which is tiresome for me as I dislike dealing with individuals who are such blatant liars, not just from my perspective, but their actions also breech the basic tenants of the religion to which they profess adherence. This situation ultimately eliminates as friends or spouses most of the Thais I have come to know over the years. If I can’t trust them, then they cannot be my close friend. A friend is someone whom I can trust, which doesn’t seem to be an important problem for Thais.