The Awkward Sawasdee

“Sawasdee ka~” in the most broken Thai imaginable rang through my ears at internship socials, shouted by my drunk British friend. 

Typical, I thought to myself. 

Everytime I mention to a farang that I’m Thai, of course they’re going to go on-and-on about how their trip to Thailand was the most eye-opening, enlightening experience of their lives. From the Pad-Thai, to Soi Cowboy, or the newly opened Jurassic World Rebirth experience. 

Immediate cringe. My instant reaction - cheeks warm, smile forced. 

Honestly, what’s so damn good about Thailand?

I lived my whole life in Thailand, in the slow burn of Bangkok heat, until I recently left for the UK. Home never felt gentle. I remember the dread stitched into evenings with the Ngamwongwan road, choking with headlights, a river before it was a road. ‘Nam-ror-rabai’, they call it, washes away any hope of getting home by the evening drama. The air damp, pressing against the skin. Every night, the same ritual. Waiting, wading, enduring.

The radio didn’t help pass the time either. The voices there were only echoes of what we already knew: another accident on Rama II, another pileup near Don Muang, another life measured in minutes of delay. Numbers climbing so high they no longer startled. By April, during Songkran, the news becomes a grim lottery – people half-joking, half-mourning: 

“so, how many will it be this year?”

We laugh because that’s what Thais do, “คนไทยติดตลก”, but behind the laughter is a quiet resignation.

Every year, the same intersection drown, the same homes are swallowed, and the city feign surprise. Politicians cut ribbons on superficial projects, money draining faster than the floods. We joke, we rant, we endure, but deep inside I wonder: is this what they love, the farangs who praise Thailand with drunken smiles? Do they know my country not only as beaches and Tomyum, but as statistics, as promises broken beneath the polluted sky?

These feelings followed with me home as I sank into the couch and looked around. I noticed how much Thailand lived in me. The milk-tea packets in the corner, the fish sauce tucked in the cabinet, and the green yadom dangling from my bag. Proof that no matter how far I go, I carry the country with me.

The cringe, I realised, was never shame. It was love disguised as anger. Why else would I cut so deeply? Because its mine–its PM2.5 in my lungs, its floods in my shoes, its smile on my face. The very things I curse are the threads that hold me together. And maybe that’s why I cannot laugh it off with friends, cannot dismiss it as another broken country. Because what breaks there breaks in me too.

So I think Thais are funny, perhaps that’s why we’re the land of smiles. We laugh at floods, at the traffic, at the headlines of a politician’s miraculous health recovery. But our laughter is more than a joke; it’ on. We are open to ideas, to people, to ambition, because to be Thai is to be free. Our humour stands against discrimination, injustice, and inequality, one small step at a time. So, to be ‘Thai’, is to protect and give back, to shoulder what’s broken while lifting what’s good.

So, when I hear or say Sawasdee now, it is more than hello. It is a reminder of our shared responsibility to build a Thailand that needs no apology, no forced smiles at drunken praise. A future where our laughter is not defence, but joy freely given.

Story by Raphassit Suwiwatchai
Instagram: beam_raphassit