Unlike us westerners that adhere to a daily breakfast, lunch and dinner eating schedule, Thais tend to graze. They are often completely overtaken by the desire to eat, right at that moment. It’s as if a spell gets cast, briefly turning them into a food eating zombie.

One time, a couple of the boys went into the kitchen to make some noodles. I told them we would be going out to eat soon so they might not want to ruin their apatite. The two smiled, put everything back, and returned to watching TV. Within 5 minutes both were back in the kitchen making noodles.

The same two boys and I were walking to the BTS one night when we passed a food stand selling grilled pork balls. The boys just had to have them, so everything came to a halt while we stopped to buy pork balls. We were headed for Balcony Pub, and the boys knew they could order something there, but it didn’t make any difference. The boys wanted pork balls, they wanted them now, and nothing else would do.

A group of us (Thai boys and farang) are walking to a restaurant one evening. Next thing we know the boys have disappeared from view. Turns out they spotted some delicious grilled squid two blocks back and stopped to buy some. Once reunited, I asked them why they would stop to eat on the way to dinner. It was explained to me the restaurant we were going to did not serve grilled squid and they wanted to eat some…silly me.

Both farang thought it was a bit rude of the boys to stop and eat when we were about to buy them dinner. The boys insisted it was acceptable practice in Thai culture, and no one would have taken offense. It was further explained that Thais eat what they want, when they want, regardless of the circumstance. Later I was able to confirm, with several other boys, this is true. It was further evidenced while I was at lunch today and observed a Thai woman, two sticks of grilled pork in hand, walk in and join a table of friends getting ready to order.

With another Thai cultural lesson under my belt, I thought it appropriate to return the favor. So, it was explained to the boys that it’s probably a good idea to avoid offending their farang host by suggesting the food he is about to buy them is no good. I didn’t notice either boy taking notes during their farang cultural lesson, but something tells me these two will never again stop to by something yummy while we’re in route to a dinning establishment. Not that I mind at this point, but it will be interesting to see if the Thai grazing gene is more powerful than the desire to achieve cross cultural harmony.

I was also a bit disturbed both boys stopped for food and didn’t tell the rest of the group. I ran this by some other farang that have Thai boyfriends. They said this happens to them all the time. As frustrating as it is, any efforts to change this in a boy are, for the most part, an exercise in futility.

When something tasty catches their eye it becomes the number one priority. The boys briefly loose contact with space and time, as they dedicate all of their mental and physical energy toward satisfying the craving for whatever has caught their food grazing eye. Once the boys have their food in hand, they snap back to reality and everything can move forward as planned.

I’m going to take a stab at explaining this, because it is one of the more significant aspects of Thai culture you will encounter daily. Ignorance of it will only cause frustration. Come to think of it, awareness will too, but you are much better off understanding Kraing Jai exists and that it can not be ignored.

Photo Courtesy of Asia Boy

The direct translation of Kraing Jai is fearful heart, but that’s a little deceiving. It is perhaps better thought of as always wanting to maintain a good heart. We have nothing like it in western cultures. The nearest thing, and its not close at all, is polite, considerate, or courteous. While those are part of Kraing Jai it goes way WAY beyond that.

Best I’ve been able to determine, Kraing Jai is the root cultural mechanism behind the Thai people’s non confrontational society. Kraing Jai is so ingrained in Thai culture, asking them to stop applying it is like requesting they stop breathing.

A friend of mine gave me a very good example of Kraing Jai. He said if a teacher tells his/her students 2+2=3 they will not try and correct him/her. They will even answer 3 on the test. When you ask a Thai boy his opinion on something, he will hold back on his true feelings if it risks offending, or passing judgment. While this may seem insignificant, you need to understand it happens with subjects we wouldn’t give a second thought at addressing candidly. Its sort of a when in doubt don’t go there mentality.

Anyone that’s lived here for any length of time quickly learns that lying is an acceptable practice in Thai society. From what I gather, Kraing Jai is at the root of this. If you invite a Thai to dinner and he does not want to go, he may very well tell you a lie about why he unfortunately can not accept your gracious invite. Best I can tell most people know they are being lied to, but that’s okay, because they also know it’s just Kraing Jai.

I’m going to take a leap here and make the assumption saving face and Kraing Jai are closely linked. It stands to reason Kraing Jai is that all important safe guard which protects against loosing face, but I could be completely wrong about this.

Photo Courtesy of Asia Boy

If you want a boy to give you an honest or candid answer about something he might otherwise shy away from, you have to say “mai Kraing Jai” repeatedly before asking the question. Mai, pronounced my, means no…no Kraing Jai. By doing so you may actually get the answer you’re looking for, but there are no guarantees.

I have noticed many Thai boys do not realize we have nothing like it in our culture, and this could contribute to their confusion when we do not seem to acknowledge it in theirs. All the more reason why every farang should try to understand, or at least acknowledge Kraing Jai.

I’m not sure I’ve given justice to this subject, as it is very difficult to understand, and I don’t pretend to have my arms completely around it yet. I once asked a Thai boy, who spoke perfect English, to explain Kraing Jai to a farang friend of mine. His response was it is extremely difficult to do, but he would try. If he had difficulty explaining it, imagine my struggle.

This is one of those pieces I’d love to get input on. Even sharing some examples would be great.

Every day at 8 am and 6 pm the National Anthem is played over loud speakers and broadcast on TV and radio. This coincides with the raising and lowering of the flag. If in a public place, everyone is expected to stop what they are doing and face in the direction of the music, while maintaining a respectful posture. Ignoring this daily ritual would be disrespectful to the country you are a guest in.

I’ve just added the following update to the Shower Time page…

Here are a couple of things I have recently learned that clear up some questions I’ve had about showering.

Photo Courtesy of Asia Boy

Why the boys want you to shower before sex…

It doesn’t matter if you showered a few hours before going home with a boy for sex. He will still want you to shower again. According to a farang friend of mine, our body odor is distinctly different from Thai. While the boys absolutely love having sex with us, they really don’t care for the way we smell. For many Thai boys it can actually be a turn off.

My farang friend was a bit apprehensive to explain this, because he felt it sounded too racially prejudice, but the fact is there are physiological differences between races, so it is plausible our body odor may be different. Armed with this information, I decided to poke around the Internet and see what I could find on the subject. As it turns out Asians produce little or no body odor, because they do not have as many odor producing glands as we westerners. I was also able to confirm that different races smell different. So what I’ve determined is our body odor is both different and much more intense. Frankly, I can’t recall ever smelling body odor on a Thai, under any circumstance, and now I know why.

My friend also told me he had read some place that Asians have an acute sense of smell, making strong unpleasant odors even more repugnant, but I’ve not been able to find any reference to this on the Internet.

A quote from American Renaissance News: Race And Physical Differences

For whatever reasons, the races do not smell the same. Blacks and whites have strong, but differing smells, and many Asians have scarcely any smell. Koreans often have no odor-producing glands in their arm-pits at all and Japanese have very few. Nineteenth-century Japanese found Europeans so foul-smelling that even today, a common Japanese expression for anything Western means “stinking of butter.”

A quote from Science Digest: Racial Odyssey

As any bloodhound knows, every person has his or her own distinctive scent. People vary in the mixture of odoriferous compounds exuded through the skin - most of it coming from specialized glands called apocrine glands. Among whites, these are concentrated in the armpits and near the genitals and anus. Among blacks, they may also be found on the chest and abdomen. Orientals have hardly any apocrine glands at all. In the words of the Oxford biologist John R. Baker, “The Europids and Negrids are smelly, the Mongoloids scarcely or not at all.” Smelliest of all are northern European, or so-called Nordic, whites. Body odor is rare in Japan. It was once thought to indicate a European in the ancestry and to be a disease requiring hospitalization.

And this quote from a page on Anosmia and Olfactory Facts

How we smell as individuals is determined by the number of sweat glands, the amount of body hair, diet, health, occupation, environment, medication, emotional health, mood, and genes. Also, blacks, whites, and Asians all have different immune-system proteins and this is one theory for why people of different races smell different. East Asians used to say that whites stank of butter (the butter smell arises from diacetyl-a very small molecule with two ketone groups; westerners tend to consume more butter and other dairy products than Asians). Meat-eaters often smell unpleasant to vegetarians. Hairy Westerners often smell unpleasant to Asians, who don’t have as many apocrine glands at the base of hair follicles as Westerners. Children smell different from adults, smokers smell different from nonsmokers.

With this understanding, the obvious question is why do the boys also want to shower. Well, if for no other reason, it’s to wash off all the skin lotions and baby powder they cover themselves with. That, and bottoms like to give themselves an enema before sex.

My conclusion from all of this is your chances for really good sex go way down when you elect to forego the shower.

Photo Courtesy of Asia Boy

Why the boys want you to shower first…

I’ve always wondered why the boys insist I shower first. I wasn’t sure if it was a courteous gesture of respect, or the boy had an ulterior motive to rifle through my things (wallet) while I’m in the bathroom, and he can hear when the water shuts off. I assumed it might be a little of each, depending on the boy. Now I know the real reason why.

According to a farang friend of mine, this is a cultural carryover from the traditional method Thais use to bathe. Traditional Thai bathing, still widely practiced today, involves standing in a large plastic tub to catch the water being scooped from an even larger tub and pored over the body. The tub catching the “dirty” water is not emptied between baths. Instead, everyone in the home takes their turn before the tub is carried out and dumped by two people. Thus, the first person to bathe is the only one that does not have to stand in dirty water produced by the others that have already bathed. To offer someone the first bath is a courteous and/or respectful gesture, even if bathing is to be done in a modern shower with floor drain. Therefore, it should be no surprise when the boy offers you first bath. He’s just being polite. Of course, he might also have plans to go through your wallet, so don’t let your guard down.

A friend sent me this link to a post over at Absolutely Bangkok. It lists, and discusses, a series of icons done by an Asian woman that illustrate the differences between Westerners and Asians.

I find the icons surprisingly bang on, despite the fact they were specifically intended to illustrate the differences between German & Chinese. As you will quickly notice, there aren’t many differences between Germans and other Westerners or Chinese and other Asians.

Do you understand all the icons? Perhaps it also serves as a good quiz of one’s awareness of Asian cultural idiosyncrasies.

Queueing

During my stay in Thailand I’ve met a few farang that seem to naturally understand the Thai psyche. They’ve quickly adapted to the Thai way of thinking with seemingly no experience behind them. These guys are very popular, and well respected, by the boys and often do not have to pay for sex.

Some have mastered the Thai language while others have not. Some live here full time and others only visit one or more times a year. Their ages range from mid twenties to mid fifties. But each seems to have this uncanny sixth sense about all things Thai.

Photo Courtesy of Private Boy Movie

I’ve been fortunate to know three guys like this, and consider all of them good friends. Each, in his own way, has contributed greatly to my understanding of the Thai way of thinking. I’ve always been envious of their ability to adapt so quickly. Each will admit they’ve made their share of mistakes along the way, but it’s not lost on me their’s has been a journey of considerable ease and early rewards.

I’ve questioned why these three individuals, with no apparent common ground, could see things so clearly, while I and so many others flounder. It wasn’t until I met a fourth individual like this that the light bulb finally went off. The answer has been right in front of me the whole time, but I didn’t see the forest through the trees.

Each of these individuals has had one or more long-term relationships with Asian boys, back in their home country – America and England. These were not all Thai boys. Some were Chinese and Vietnamese, but they all shared the same general Asian way of thinking. All of these guys had the luxury of a relationship with one or more Asians that could speak English, were immersed in a western culture, and could effectively communicate the differences between those two cultures. In addition, they could better observe how Asians process information differently, because it stands out more when done within a western cultural environment.

Photo Courtesy of Private Boy Movie

Thus, each of these guys arrived in Thailand with a general psychological understanding of Asians the rest of us don’t enjoy. They still experienced a learning curve, but with a huge handicap. I’m sure all these guys recognize they are on a fast track, compared to the rest of us, but I’m not convinced most of them know why. I asked the first three, and they had no idea. However, my newest acquaintance did, and that’s when I made the connection.

So, who cares? What difference does it make that I now understand why these guys are different? The answer is credibility and validation. Some things are best dealt with by trusting one’s gut feelings, but that’s difficult to do when you first arrive. Consequently, we all seek advice when our instincts can’t be trusted or seem to be failing us. There are lots of farang here more than willing to offer advice and opinion on things that are often very subjective in nature, yours truly included. I think it’s important to know what the foundation is of an individual’s cultural awareness, before deciding how much weight to give that person’s counsel.

There are people that live here for 20 years and don’t get it, so you can’t judge a person’s understanding solely based on the number of years he’s served. Some would argue only those that live here full time have a chance at understanding, but I’ve seen evidence to the contrary. I’m not saying you should only trust the advice of guys that had an Asian boyfriend back home, but if you are lucky enough to find one that has, he’s probably a keeper. Its just one point of validation that the person you have met is worth listening to. Everyone here is on a journey. Some are further along than others, but no matter how far someone has gone, I’d rather travel with a wise man.

Photo Courtesy of Private Boy Movie

A lot of guys here are totally jaded, and not your best source for advice. The forums are dominated by them. This cynical viewpoint comes from personal experiences, and is therefore a product of their own making.

Look for the individuals with a positive perspective. Watch how they interact with the boys. Are they liked and respected by the boys? Do they respect the boys, or view them as sexual toys that can not be trusted? No one is infallible, but full time or part time, they are the ones that truly understand…at some level.

A friend of mine once asked me if I knew when the sex trade in Thailand started. I told him it was spawned by the Vietnam War. He shook his head and said the war created awareness that later resulted in a booming sex “tourism” trade, but prostitution in Thailand dates back several hundred years. He went on to say the number one consumers of prostitution in Thailand today are the Thais themselves. He said if all the foreigners, farang and Asian, were banned from Thailand it would have little influence on prostitution in the Land Of Smiles. Of course, it would have a huge economic impact, but that’s not relevant to the point he was making.

Photo Courtesy of Private Boy Movie

Not satisfied to take his word for it I did some poking around on the Internet and discovered he was correct. Most telling are these figures I plucked from a 2004 Bangkok Recorder article:

95% of all Thai men have, at least once in their life, purchased sex
4.6 million Thai men regularly see prostitutes
Approximately 500,000 tourists annually engage

NOTE that the tourist figure does not distinguish between Westerners and Asians.

Photo Courtesy of Private Boy Movie

My friend also told me there are straight and gay Thai 4 Thai brothels all over Thailand, even in rural communities. He said boys make 300 baht short-time, and services are rendered in private rooms within the brothel. I already knew about the places in Bangkok that are for Thais only, and farang are not welcome, but had no idea this was so commonplace throughout the country. My additional research confirmed all of this except the amount boys get paid in rural areas.

I’m writing about this, because when I started Rice Queen Diary I got some rather nasty comments from zealots complaining we farang are the reason all these boys are being “exploited”. The suggestion being, if we foreigners would stop coming to Thailand for the sex trade, the “problem” would go away. Come to find out, our contribution to the sex trade in Thailand amounts to a drop in the bucket.

Photo Courtesy of Private Boy Movie

Below are links to the more notable pages I found on the subject:

Prostitution in Thailand
Thailand’s Long Tradition of Prostitution
Prostitution in Thailand: Facing Hard Facts

I was visiting with a farang friend the other night that’s been in a very successful long-term relationship with a Thai boy. He said something to me about relationships I thought worth mentioning.

Photo Courtesy of Private Boy Movie

Most farang understand it is important to make adjustments to accommodate the boy’s culture. What we often forget is relationships are a two-way street, and the boy needs to be making adjustments as well. The boy is not going to do this without some prompting from you, but the first step is recognizing you can and must insist he make an equal effort to accept and embrace your cultural standards.

It is a long, slow, and often frustrating process, but critical to the success of any farang/Thai relationship.

I may have touched on this before, but really can’t remember. While there are always exceptions, as a general rule best friends do not have sex with each other.

Photo Courtesy of Asia Boy

By outward appearance the two boys might look like they have a sexual relationship. Their tone of voice gets very sweet. One may gently caress the others fingers as he passes by. You might even observe some stroking of the neck and hair on the back of the head. They will sleep in the same bed with each other, and might even end up cuddling a little, but sex is NEVER part of the equation.

You see this lot in the Thai 4 Thai discos. At a distance two boys will give every appearance they are lovers, but by night’s end one or both have hooked up with a different boy.

I once asked a boy if friends have sex with each other, and he abruptly replied, “NO…only farang do this!”

The wai is a ubiquitous gesture of respect, which on the surface seems easy to master, but in reality follows a complex set of rules. Actually the practice is second nature for those that grew up with it, but potentially disastrous for anyone with little or no understanding of Thai culture and etiquette.

A lot of westerners think it is important, or fun, to learn how to wai, and love to practice it when ever possible. Unfortunately most get it wrong, and it just looks silly. On top of that, many Thais think it is ridiculous or even disrespectful for westerners to try and adopt this practice, as we are not Thai and we are not Buddhist. Even so, they will humor us and say nothing. This, of course, gives westerners the false impression they’ve done nothing wrong.

From what I have been able to determine, we really don’t need to be worrying about mastering the Thai wai. The only exceptions I’ve identified are with those involved in high level business or political relations. Those aside, all we really need to do, in response to receiving a wai, is smile and nod our head, and we never need to initiate. To do otherwise puts us at risk of looking foolish or worse. As an example, if you wai a child it is believed to take 7 years off his or her life. Personally, I’d rather take the safe road and avoid such blunders.

Westerners are not expected to wai, and will not be looked down on for abstaining. This is just my opinion, but as of this writing I believe we actually gain more respect by not trying to wai, under any circumstance. If a situation arises where you are expected to wai, I have no doubt someone will offer specific instructions on how it should be done for that one time. A good example might be some special ceremony you have been invited to participate in that requires executing the wai.

Sometimes trying too hard to impress the locals does us more harm than good. Never loose sight of this very important reality. Our true charm is that we ARE different.