Thailand's Beauty

Somewhere, I have a draft of a Thailand article I know I will never finish. Summarizing a country so skilled at navigating history’s tides is difficult, so I’m glad a European advertising agency did it for me. In the advert, a teenage daughter argues with her mother in several two-second scenes, then runs away. Next, we see a forlorn girl eyeing an outdoor food stall from a dark corner. As she is about to turn away, an older female in charge beckons her forward. The teenager confesses she has no money, but her concern is calmly dismissed. As the cook prepares a simple meal of rice and eggs with sliced cucumbers, the girl asks, “Why are you so nice?”

I don’t know any Thai,1 but know enough about Thai culture to know the word “nice” has no direct translation—and it’s worth noting neither of the two women have smiled. The query indicates the girl realizes she has played a part in unbalancing the universe and is submitting her question as a form of apology. You don’t need to know about Rama IV, Rama V, France, Britain, and Russia to know it’s balance that is dear in Thai culture, and balance that has allowed Thailand to survive.2 Whatever you may think of Thais generally and individually, they are a balanced combination of poise and some other word that does not exist in English because in Western culture, being “nice” often denotes weakness. In Thailand, people are kind because they are strong.

After a plate of food is placed in front of her, the would-be runaway asks her first sincere question: “How did you know I don’t like onions?” The vendor pulls out a passport-sized photo of the girl and informs her someone else is “nicer,” even though that person may be strict and meticulous towards her. As the hungry girl takes her first bite, drops of tears fall across her face, but she does not stop eating. We see her mother searching for her, and with each bite and each tear, we go farther backwards—to the mother carefully preparing different meals, including one with a clock showing 5 in the morning, and one where she transfers the last beef ball from her plate to her daughter’s. The vendor suggests—and it is a nudge, not an order, because Thais come from the Tai, or free, and Thai-land means land of the free—“Why don’t you give your mother a call?” As the mobile phone rings, we continue backwards in time until the teenager being fed is a baby, and after a frantic voice on the other end says the girl’s name, from the baby’s mouth we hear her first word: “Mom?”

Teenage rebellion towards overbearing parenting may be a universal theme, but no one managed a more effective advert until Thais were involved. The balance within Thai culture comes from thousands of years of Buddhism and is distilled into Thais the same way honey drips into a mason jar from delicate yet sturdy honeycomb boards: sweet, but equally consistent and robust. Outsiders get attracted by the sweet taste and transformed into amber if troublesome. Thinking about upsetting Thailand’s (or Cambodia’s) equilibrium? Thousands of gods and thousands of years of experience will fight to restore order.

No wonder so many Thais seek personal relationships with their gods.3 Original Theravada temples used to contain hidden compartments to store gold and other valuables, but when the Burmese military destroyed Ayutthaya in the late 1700s, Thais migrated to Bangkok and rebuilt replicas as a lesson: others may be powerful, some may have stronger armies, but we remain protectors of a way of life that runs through our blood.

Had the teenager eating her plate of rice and eggs studied Buddhism, she might have remembered a relevant aphorism: “Eating by oneself brings no joy. A delicacy should not be eaten alone.” Under the right circumstances, even simple street food, which Anthony Bourdain called the “salvation of the human race,” can be a delicacy. Perhaps we’ve forgotten, like the girl, an important lesson: if only the gods can see everything, then being human means being humble.

© Matthew Mehdi Rafat (April 2026)

ขอบคุณครับ to all the food and beverage workers in Thailand who tolerated my point-and-show-calculator approach to purchases, especially the soy milk vendor in Nonthaburi who included extra toppings despite my never having exact change.