Thai People’s Rudeness in Riverside Market, Thailand

cite this article: Arunrangsiwed, P. (2019). Thai People’s Rudeness in Riverside Market, Thailand. Retrieved from https://sw-eden.net/2019/12/30/thai-people-rudeness/

Thai People’s Rudeness in Riverside Market, Thailand

I have read many comments created in online space by foreign tourists who visited Thailand. Although I do not have a perfect English, I could understand that many talk about negative experience regarding Thai people‘s rudeness. I am not happy then, because I am also Thai and I think we are politer that what foreigners believed.

When I was in New York City and I had to buy Thai food from China Town, I experience a similar thing, Chinese people’s rudeness. Those days, I felt that Chinese people in china Town were so mean to me. In fact, they were nice toward other Chinese people. The only communication failure is that they could not speak English and they tried to shout out to make me understand them.

Every time that I go to floating markets or riverside markets in Thailand, hawkers and the visitors are generally nice and polite to me. However, many of them could not communicate to each other be using the same language. Hawkers could not speak English or Chinese, while the foreigners could not speak Thai. Then, the foreign tourists would perceive their unintended rudeness. Some avoid talking to foreigners and walk away. They are not rude, but they are just afraid of the communication.

I saw what happen with my own eyes. I saw the problem when the foreigners wanted to buy some food at floating market, and then, they left, because of the communication failure. I and my mother walked to talk with the folk leader and the floating market manager. We told them that if we got some fund from my university, I would make English food menus for every shop in floating market. The folk leader agreed with our project.

To get some fund from the university, I had to wait for half a year. Weeks later, I went to the particular floating market again. I found that they did not wait for the fund or project I told them. I, a kind of, wow! Most hawkers who sold foods made the multi-language menus by themselves and put them in front of the shops. I feel very happy that they took my idea and took the action very fast. I did not need to do the project for them anymore. I still requested the fund for the same project, but I will make this thing for other floating market or riverside markets that do not have the English menus or pinned places in Google maps yet.

I hope my idea and what I am doing now would solve the communication problem between foreign tourists and Thai hawkers. I wish to see less comment complaining about Thai people’s rudeness. I want the foreigners to know the truth inside our warm heart.

It is important to note that I posted this article in this webpage before I put everything together and submitted to the university. In other words, I owned the copyrights of this article or blog post, and later, I reused this copyrighted material in the research report. Similarly, I wrote an article for a conference in Phayao, and later, I used the article for the research report. That also means, I owned the copyrighted material before reusing it again in the research report.