Saving Face - losing face...?

One of the most striking aspects of Thai culture is "saving face." I might have mentioned this in some previous posts, but essentially, Thai people never really let their true emotions seep out from the facade. Many times, when they feel uncomfortable about anything, they just laugh it off. When I'm irritated for whatever reason (I can think of a million and one things that make me want to scream here), Thai people just laugh, making my irritation all the worse. Ok, so maybe I'm just an impatient westerner or farang. When I had been warned about this cultural difference, I had thought , well when in Rome do as the Romans, I'm sure there will never be any reason to show any anger, since I'll be in Thailand. But when I first arrived here, it became apparent to me that I'm just not as laid back as I thought! If something angers me, well I have a hard time holding it in. Not that I ever really lose it and scream, but I definitely let my frustration be known.

I've noticed lately that this is all starting to change. I'm improving on this regard, I'm learning how to save face more... I don't think I'll ever really be fully Thai though, I think some emotion is good, even necessary sometimes...

So you can imagine my surprise when a few weeks ago, I saw my coordinator lose face. My roommate and I announced to him that we were leaving Chiang Rai for good at the end of February. He had told us that we would be done teaching mid February, so we were free to leave at the end of the month. Apparently, this was a COMPLETE misunderstanding (how many more misunderstandings will I endure? ha), and he had been under the impression that we were just going to hang out in Chiang Rai during the entire month of March, just for the prestige of having foreign teachers. Clearly they don't really need us, they were just going to keep us on for the sake of having us, it's an appearance thing. So bizarre to me! As we very awkwardly told him that we had made plans to leave and couldn't stick around in March ( I mean, let's be honest here, there is no way I'm just sitting around for appearance sake when I have all of Southeast Asia to explore), I watched his face decompose and I saw emotion - EMOTION! He seemed very upset, my roommate and I had never seen anything like it. Luckily, I had to leave to teach immediately, but she had to stick around the office which she told me was highly uncomfortable.

Last week, as I was waiting to meet up with Bertrand and his friend for dinner, I was sitting in my usual spot in the open space of the night bazaar. I was quietly reading my book when I suddenly heard loud voices. I looked over and saw a woman speaking in a very high-pitched tone to another pointing her finger to her. Pointing is definitely not polite in Thailand. The screaming escalated until the woman got up and starting pulling at each other's hair and wound up in a full blown cat fight! I was flabbergasted.

So there you have it, even Thai people let the facade crumble down to expose their true characters. We are all human after all! Print this post