DiscussWorldIssues - Socio-Economic Religion and Political Uncensored Debate - View Single Post - How to wai and generally handle a situation like this?

**PebydataFeents** · 01-09-2012, 02:01 PM

On many occasions I have seen old villagers in Isaan wai Government officials who were much younger. It seems clear that "suungness" has priority over age in wai-ing conventions.

That's been my experience too.

The book "Thais Say It Best When They Say Nothing At All" deals with waiing conventions in quite a bit of detail. It's a pretty good book IMHO.

I don't think it's a matter of choosing between Thai and Western conventions. When meeting people in Thailand, I generally wai first or wait on the basis of age (and ignore the other status stuff), then we shake hands, then we often squeeze each other's arms.

So we go through a formal and hierarchical Thai gesture, a formal and egalitarian Western gesture and an informal and egalitarian Thai gesture all in the space of 20 seconds.

01-09-2012, 02:01 PM	#14
PebydataFeents Join Date Oct 2005 Posts 372 Senior Member	On many occasions I have seen old villagers in Isaan wai Government officials who were much younger. It seems clear that "suungness" has priority over age in wai-ing conventions. That's been my experience too. The book "Thais Say It Best When They Say Nothing At All" deals with waiing conventions in quite a bit of detail. It's a pretty good book IMHO. I don't think it's a matter of choosing between Thai and Western conventions. When meeting people in Thailand, I generally wai first or wait on the basis of age (and ignore the other status stuff), then we shake hands, then we often squeeze each other's arms. So we go through a formal and hierarchical Thai gesture, a formal and egalitarian Western gesture and an informal and egalitarian Thai gesture all in the space of 20 seconds.
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