Natural Freedom

Travel brochures often portrays Thailand as the happy-go-lucky 'Land of Smiles', an impression the Tourism Authority of Thailand are more than happy to go along with. Most visitors will even see a sign welcoming them to the 'Land of Smile' (sic) in the airport before they've even cleared immigration. Though the famous Thai smile is not so common in Bangkok nowadays, you'll certainly understand why this slogan has stuck for so long if you spend any length of time in the more rural parts of Thailand. Even in Bangkok, you can smile at any Thai person and it's pretty rare you won't get a smile back in return.

New visitors often assume that the Thais are a very friendly and happy people, but this is a bit of an oversimplification. After all, many of the Thais they meet may well be working long hours in relatively menial jobs and earning less than $200 a month - do they really have so much to smile about ?

The reason is there's a much broader range of uses for smiling in Thailand, some of which would be considered as inappropriate or even as rude in the west. For example, if a Thai bumps into you in a bar and spills some of your drink, he'll probably smile - a reaction that is unlikely to go down well with the average foreigner.

But the smile (yim in Thai) is perceived in Thailand as being just about the most appropriate reaction to any possible situation. It's used to show happiness, embarrassment, fear, tension, resignation, remorse etc...What the smile means depends on the 'type' being used - out of a possible 13.

So you can't necessarily assume that anyone smiling is happy or friendly, because, as shown above, there are also a few less pleasant reasons for them to do so. Similarly it helps to know, for instance, that people smiling if you happen to trip up may not actually be laughing at you (yim yor), but just giving you a yim yair-yair to try and stop you feeling embarrassed.

Obviously, being able to distinguish one type of smile from another is no easy task for the average visitor to Thailand. It helps to be aware of the less pleasant varieties though and not, as many visitors do, get so mesmerized by the 'happiness' of everyone that you don't see what's really going on underneath the sometimes superficial smile.