The Bangkok Podcast | Expat Life In Thailand Via Expats From Canada & America

Key links for this episode: Support us on Patreon to get the show early You’ve probably heard of “the Thai smile”, or know that Thailand is referred to as “the Land of Smiles”. Both of those phrases are well-earned, but that whole smiling thing is more than something done just in the hospitality space. For many Thais, smiling in a situation is a default reaction, even when the experience they are smiling at is a negative one. Like when a dog almost eats a small child and the owner’s reaction is to smile it off. Oh, and that’s not a hypothetical. It happened to Greg’s kid. Or when a Thai driver almost hits a pedestrian and just smiles and waves. Also not hypothetical, as our special guest Ed Knuth (filling in for Evo Terra this week) will tell you. But what looks like a blow-off really isn’t. It’s a cultural difference, and those of us who’ve been here a while learn to self-correct our immediate emotional response when we encounter the Thai smile. Or at least, we try to. It’s hard to break those old social c