A guide to surviving Thailand for beginners | Bangkok Post: opinion

GUEST COLUMN

I have come to realise that many of my readers are foreigners (or farang as they are affectionately called in Thailand. Therefore I thought it would be especially useful for the farang to understand the personality traits of the Thai, because I firmly believe many of these traits are reflected in our system of government and are the cause of many problems we now face.

Friendly farang: Peter Traub, a German investment consultant, briefly flew a yellow-and-red kite in front of Government House on Aug 9, 2010 in a symbolic gesture calling for Thais to work towards national reconciliation.

I hope this article will serve as a humorous "guide to surviving Thailand" because, being Thai myself, I must admit we're an odd bunch, or as Winston Churchill would have said, "A riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma."