Every culture claims to have a passionate family structure with grandmas firmly in the kitchen cooking grand meal, aunties gossiping, and kids chasing each other around the dinner table. The Americans celebrate the family with holidays like Thanksgiving and many groups throughout the world have similar festivities, though drunken jokes around a turkey varies slightly in content depending on your location.
Thailand, too, is proud of its devotion to the family. It is a country that sees nothing wrong with grown men living with their parents, sometimes sleeping in the same room with them, until he is old enough to know better. Some stay home their whole lives, bringing a newly acquired wife into the house to share the space with mom and dad. With enough means and a large enough plot of land, some families can afford to build junior a smaller house right next to the folks, but not too far, as being physically close implies a greater care and devotion to the clan.
Perhaps it is this close quarters that give rise to Thai humor. As an American who’s lived in Thailand for almost a decade, here are my thoughts on what makes the Thais laugh.
First, things need to appear funny. So much of the humor is on how things look. The loudness of the joke, not the subtly of the message, is what the Thais find humorous. For example, the obsession with making fun of dark-skinned Thais is relentless on every level: From crude exchanges on the playground to more sophisticated cat fights on the evening soaps. Recently, a big-name ad agency got a lot of attention (but fascinatingly not in much trouble) for covering subway seats with stickers saying: “These seats are for light-skinned people only” onto subway seats. The product that they were trying to sell was a face lotion that promises to blanch the typically bronzed Thai complexion.
Most things that get recorded are from a privileged perspective. Letters surviving centuries to be studied in modern times are seldom those of peasants. So it is very useful to observe what rich people think now, because that’s what our descendants will think we all thought
In Thailand, early November is ‘katin’ season, with people rounding up cash donations and bringing the lot, along with food and basics supplies, to give as an offering to ordained monks who reside at various temples throughout the country. There are very fancy katins at very fancy temples, almost like society event, with big-haired ladies arriving in Mercedes Benzes where offering go well into the millions.
Recently, I went on a family trip to a katin that was far from fancy. The road in was not paved and they just built a new communal bathrooms with new, non-flushing, toilets. There’s a water reservoir next to the toilet; you scoop out the water and dump it down the basin to bury the evidence. Don’t ask about toilet paper and do bring your own sanitary wipes, please.
On this outing was my cousin G, who is very rich and has a driver and a servant following her around all the time. Anyway, she found a poor child and made her sing and dance. She didn’t even finish the song when G said enough, pulled out and equivalent of 3 dollars, and sent her on the way. Though G laughed liked hiccupping idiot the whole time, I guess that’s not really humor. If there’s something that Thais love, though, it’s a good show.
So relax. What the Thais find funny will likely offend most westerners, but that’s Thailand for you.
