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I read of these things from time to time, and always think 'not in my experience' and scratch my head a bit thinking that maybe I have missed the point somewhere.
A coupe of things strike me:
Firstly, when I was sat in the baking heat outside the tin shack that passes as the family home, when someone offered me a drink I took it. Maybe I did commit a terrible faux-pax, but it seems to me that those people were far more concerned with other things than my lack of manners. Social graces were never high on the agenda.
Secondly, this concept of rigid manners and ways to behave has never shown itself to me anywhere in Thailand, though I am happy to concede that A: I am a low rent kind of guy so maybe I am swimming in the shallow end socially and\or B: I am an ignorant farang and missed the point completely.
I do wonder though, if this is some sort of misty-eyed pastiche of the way Thailand used to be, or the way people wish it was? Maybe in the same way that people perceive the English to be tea drinking, bowler hat wearing ponces that all carry an umbrella and talk like the queen?
I reckon that if I was sat out in the boonies when the beer came around and said 'no thanks', they would just share mine out and not ask again.
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