To Wai or not to Wai?
In the Netherlands we shake hands. Not in Thailand. Here people greet each other with a 'wai'. You fold your hands together as in a prayer, at the level (fingertips) of your chin. However, there is much more to it…
“All pigs are created equal, but some are more equal than others.” According to George Orwell in Animal Farm. Possibly, and certainly in Thailand. Everyone has a different social status. Even identical twins are not equal: there is an eldest sibling and a youngest sibling. Although the difference in birth is five minutes, the eldest is 'phi sau' (eldest brother/sister) and the second is 'nong sau' (youngest brother/sister).
Okay, but what does that have to do with greeting? In Thailand, everything. In the West, it doesn't matter who puts out their hand first in greeting. In Thailand, the socially lower always greets the socially higher. He or she makes a more respectful wai by raising the fingertips and possibly tilting the head slightly lower. The socially superior answers that 'wai', and does so slightly less.
Monks don't wai-and. Sometimes they nod. For the rest, everyone waits for everyone else, depending on their socially relative status. A teacher is always wai-t by his students, but wai-t himself to the rector, or a senior government official. Children wai-en their parents and so on.
In a supermarket or restaurant you will usually get a respectful wai at the checkout. In that case, you won't wai-t back! Give a friendly nod or smile. That's more than enough.
You won't notice it yourself, but if you return a wai, it's about the same as answering "Thanks for visiting AH" with a deep bow to the cashier and saying "no, no, no, it was extremely kind of you" you to do my shopping with you'.
Source: Dutch Association Thailand
HM the King is indeed supposed to give a monk a wai on official occasions. In the Thai hierarchy, a monk, as a representative of the Buddha, is above the King. The monk, of course, does not wait back.
Ver-wai-de situations?
My guiding principle is “would I (take the initiative to shake) hands in the Netherlands”? That and of course realize that there are various positions in Thailand that are higher or lower than you based on age, profession / rank etc. When you go out for dinner you don't shake hands with the staff, so you don't wave them, a car salesman gives you a hand in the Netherlands so you don't have to wave it and so on. A smile and/or nod out of courtesy will suffice. Even then, the execution won't always be perfect as an outsider (for example, you have to wave someone of a much higher status by holding your hands higher and bending a little more than someone who is slightly higher in the ranking), but it will roughly work nice not to embarrass yourself. By showing your good will and intentions you will not offend anyone.
Waien, well sometimes I see foreigners who walk all day long, at the postman at just people on the street, etc., etc. But if you really pay attention, the Thai wind doesn't blow that often at all, I'm almost never the first to wait, like my elderly Thai woman. neighbors sometimes wail, I of course wail back, but that's usually it.
From a cultural perspective, wouldn't it be more respectful to wait for your elderly neighbors instead of them for you? (Or are you 'older' than your neighbours?) In such a case, age is the yardstick, I understand?
Dear Mike,
You don't have to wait for everyone, and not for our use to older people.
Giving a hand is really not the same as a wai.
It has more value if you really have a little more respect for some higher people, not older.
If I get some food at a store, I won't give a wai (simple).
A simple nod or a nice eye contact says it all, whether this man / woman is 16 or 80.
Yours faithfully,
Erwin
Dear Erwin,
I stopped blowing years ago.
As Farang, you just wink.
Johan
It also seems to me to be a particularly hygienic advantage. at least you don't have to shake hands with someone who comes off the toilet without washing them.
Or coughing and spluttering in his right hand smears all his bacteria strains on you.
Maybe a bit of a dirty story but take a look around..
Frank F
When I get into a situation to wail someone, and I have my hands full, I may do just that. My wai back to people who waien at me is usually short and low.
I never, ever do it in the store. Not even in children. Older people again.
By the way, this was recently also written in Thaivisa (the English blog about Thailand and quite a good blog). I liked an answer: should I wai back if they wait for me: wai not was the answer. Nice play on words.
It is that easy, there is indeed a difference in a wai, especially the age requires what kind of wai you have to make.
Check out this link, https://youtu.be/SRtsCuVqxtQ it starts at about 1 minute.
gr Cor
You can also give a wai, not as a greeting, but as an expression of gratitude. If someone, whom I would otherwise never greet with a wai, has helped me well in a shop or elsewhere, I give a wai with khopkhoen khrap.
The biggest travesty is making a wai tov a barmaid. A Thai who sees a farang do that will be strengthened in his belief that farangs are CRAZY
Still, even if it is out of ignorance and 'not done', there is something of respect for the bargirl. May also seem so. As human beings we are equal, or at least, we should be.
Bert DeKort,
A barmaid is also a person and as there are Thai weirdos and idiots, you can also divide them into the farrang category.
It is not important what anyone else thinks of what you or I do. I think the why is more important.
I see farangs making a wai every now and then, such as against children and much younger people. They think they are being very polite, but the opposite is true. Many farangs still have to learn when they should and should not make a wai.
In the tourist areas, the staff is often already 'seriously' westernized.
For example, when I report to my regular hotel, the employees already approach me with outstretched hands. Some are so excited that they extend a hand every time they hold the door open. At a certain point that became a bit too much for me, but being the first to wait for the staff was not an option of course. I solved that by saluting briefly about 10 meters away, before a hand was extended. They got it right away and have since happily saluted back, or first.
I rarely do waien, really only when I feel particularly honored. For example, when in a bar where a birthday party is being celebrated, and where eighty people are sitting, I am still offered a piece of the most important (there is also a hierarchy) birthday cake by the birthday person.
.
In this context I cannot resist leaving a link to a video on Youtube from 1919(!) about visiting the higher Siamese circles at that time.
The servants and the guests literally crawl on the floor to ensure that their heads do not rise higher than that of the (seated) hostess. The height of the wai is then apparently of secondary importance, because it is, more or less necessarily, made on the ground.
That is how you see it - except at ceremonial gatherings where the King is present - fortunately not much anymore.
The video lasts almost ten minutes, the crawling can be seen from 02:30.
.
https://youtu.be/J5dQdujL59Q
I was at least 25 years ago in the Diamond Cliff Resort on Phuket, one of the best hotels in Patong, and the staff still crawled into the restaurant in almost the same way as in the video. Even when ordering a coffee, the waiter first stopped at a distance from the guest to kneel and then moved on one hip towards the guest's table, which was extremely painful to me, because I when this culture was still foreign. When I visited this restaurant again 10 years ago with a friend, because I wanted to share this experience with him, it had already been abolished and adapted to modern times. What you still see everywhere in Thailand, and what is still part of good manners, is the fact that people automatically bend over when passing, and thus indicate a certain respect. In a ceremony involving the King, it is still good manners to move on the bottom, and to give a Wai that is put on above the head, only for Buddha it is even higher.
Unfortunately Dick is right. The Thais have this custom. And think it's very strange and don't take you seriously at all. If you deviate from that. You have 5 different levels of wais. But you have farangs who give a child or household help the highest wai. Trust me, you're embarrassing yourself this way. And they will think he must be very low just to wain me like that. That's just how it is in their culture. I myself always just raise my arm to greet a neighbor or woman and most are fine with that.
Dear editors,
There is a major flaw in the story.
'there is an eldest sibling and a youngest sibling. Even if the difference in birth is five minutes, the eldest is 'phi sau' (eldest brother/sister) and the second is 'nong sau' (youngest brother/sister)'.
must be> phi-nong chaay/sau (brother/sister)
Regards Joy
พี่น้อง phîe-nóng already means brothers and sisters (which also exists in English: siblings). Only when you want to distinguish a brother or sister, the addition of chaaj or săaw comes in!
พี่น้อง phîe-nóng already means brothers and sisters (which also exists in English: siblings). Only when you want to distinguish a brother or sister, the addition of chaaj or săaw comes in!
After five years in Thailand I haven't changed my way of waing much… first of all I'm a foreigner and then it is understandable for a Thai that I don't always know when to waien. Secondly, I'm also getting older, so I don't have to wait with everyone. I nod and that is also accepted.
What I find really remarkable is when people guard store or restaurant staff…. I immediately know that they are on vacation. They have heard or seen that people are waiting, but do not yet know to whom. It already says something about those people.
But often I don't know either…. my dear wife will tell me if I did it right or not, so I can still learn…
It's a bit more difficult. I don't wait for the cashier with the normal message, but I do, for example, when they have been looking for something special for me. Or at the end of a longer stay to thank the cleaning lady for her good care. And then I will probably get it wrong sometimes, but as long as I don't wai every 10 meters or never wai, then I can get away with it.
May I perhaps add this to he Wai.
As an octogenarian, I've been told I don't have to go back Wai to ladies, it would bring bad luck.
Anyone else have experience with that?
Best regards,
Pierre Van Mensel
Small continuation of my above reaction, When a pandemic broke out worldwide two years ago, it became even more clear that a Wai is much better than shaking hands with us.
Suddenly we started giving kisses away and looking for all sorts of alternatives to our handshakes that seemed as ridiculous as they were really functional.
Some started bumping their fists together, while others, although we were also taught to sneeze in the inside of the elbow, started to greet by bumping these elbows together.
Again, you also occasionally saw others do it with their toes bumping together, as if the whole thing wasn't ridiculous enough.
Why not just give a Wai all together instead of these weird inflections that didn't really look like anything?
Actually, the above reflections on all the falang bring little help to a better understanding.
Our Western way of greeting is compared to the Thai one.
In doing so, I notice pure oriental exotic points of view, as the westerner wants to see. Tino Kuis would call that orientalism.
The editors clearly noticed. You cannot equate our western way of greeting with a handshake with the Thai wai. With them it is an indication of a social status, more specifically the person who is lower in some way (in terms of age, money, status, studies...etc), will have to make the wai. So it's not really greeting! It is also a negative approach.
When you shake hands (i.e. touch someone) as we do, you approach that person on a purely equal basis. We Westerners who brought our absolute monarchs to the scaffold and proclaimed the equality of individuals and the equalization of classes through the proletarian revolution cannot possibly understand why Thais sometimes crawl on the ground or make themselves very small when greeting them. We find that humiliating.
We free, independent, equal, democratic Westerners show each other with one hand that we are not inferior to the other.
However, we also have gradations in the handshake to show the other in which relationship we stand, that is greeting in a positive way...
We shake hands stiffly if we are not a friend, we shake briefly or lower, or very long, we grab the other person's hand with both hands, we add a hug, short or longer, sincere or not, and yes, when old Soviet rats meet each other, a very long intimate embrace can take place.
In summary: we Westerners assume that we are each other's equals… but we do show in our handshake how cold or how warm our relationship is, so an emotional gradation.
And yes, refusing a hand is really rude. How do you solve that? Take a seat at a very long table and you won't get around to it, as Putin shows.
It was because of the corona, I heard. No, it was a stern rejection of equality with the interlocutor.
I myself would say that the Thai approach relies much more on hierarchy and the Dutch/Western one a lot less, but not 100%. There are books and courses full that try to teach someone the finer points of how to approach and greet each other in business or personal relationships. This with the intention that you leave a positive impression on your (business) relationship, make your position clear and are not seen as a dishcloth.
I am not a fan of learning a folk or business culture from a book full of crude stereotype sketches, perhaps useful for those who are very insecure and prefer to see a manual as something to hold on to instead of experiencing and inventing it yourself. If we ignore the wisdom from books and courses, I would still argue that someone, a simple wage slave, who has a meeting with the head of state, prime minister, director, etc. behaves differently than when two people who are more or less equal in function, social class, etc. Yes, also in the Netherlands. In Thailand this is of course present to a large extent and this is expressed in a different way, including the way of greeting and showing respect.
Quote:
' We Westerners who brought our absolute monarchs to the scaffold and proclaimed the equality of individuals and the equalization of classes through the proletarian revolution, find it impossible to understand why Thais sometimes crouch on the ground or make themselves very small in greeting. We find that humiliating.'
Us and them. I assure you that most Thais also find that bending and crouching humiliating and want to change it. I understand very well why Thais still crawl and want to get rid of it.
Indeed, there is still quite a hierarchy in the Netherlands and a striving for more equality in Thailand. So we are not that different. But it seems more fun to always emphasize the 'being different'.
After 30 years of living and traveling in Thailand and neighboring countries and after reading all kinds of books and sites, I have learned this:
1. I never wave first unless addressing a monk. I will never meet people of higher status…
2. I don't want children
3. No people in the hospitality industry and shop staff because they are children
4. No people with low-esteem professions; street sweepers, sewer cleaners and traffic police (unless the latter doesn't start with money…)
5. Clear a venomous snake from my garden and you will get the deepest wai ever (and 200 baht…)
6. I am in my 70s and no one expects a wai from me. A smile is just as nice.
7. Etiquette varies by country and even by region.
8. Instead of an unclear wai, a smile is much better. And speaking a few words in their language is also appreciated.
Precisely. Wai or no wai is not very important, but do show your interest and your sympathy. A smile and a nod says so much.
"Don't whine so much, Dad!" my son often said, I don't really know why…and then I would give him a sarcastic wai. A grateful wai is also good.