Thais obey people not rules

Love, Drugs, and a Mother’s Three-Rai Farm

Thais obey people not rules.

In Thailand, authority flows through people, not rules. A look at how hierarchy, loyalty, and quiet defiance play out in our village’s tangled lives. A young couple eloped rather than fight her parents openly. Her parents still haven’t fully accepted him. Now he’s drifting toward drugs. The police don’t really figure into it. They never do around here. The village headman is handling it. That’s how things work here.

How Thais Think of Love Compared with the Western Concept

Western love is loud. It’s romantic gestures, grand declarations, and public displays of affection. Thais tend to see all that as embarrassing. Love here is quieter and runs deeper.

In the West, you fall in love and tell the world. In Thailand, you fall in love and tell almost nobody. Couples rarely hold hands in public. Kissing in the street is frowned upon. That doesn’t mean the feelings aren’t there.

Western love puts the individual first. My happiness. My needs. My choice of partner. Thai love puts the family first. Your parents’ approval matters more than your own feelings. Sagon and Yoopaa are a perfect example.

That’s not unique to Thailand. Most of Asia thinks this way. But it runs particularly deep here. A Thai woman who defies her parents over a man carries that weight for a long time. Yoopaa knows that.

Western couples split up when love fades. Thais tend to stay together. Duty, loyalty, and face keep relationships intact long after the romance has cooled. Divorce carries stigma here. Walking away is not easy.

That’s not necessarily worse. Many long Western marriages are built on less. Love in Thailand is quieter, more practical, and more deeply tied to family and duty. It just looks different from the outside.

Drugs in Thailand

Thailand has some of the toughest drug laws in the world. Possession of even small amounts can mean years in prison. Trafficking can mean death. The law is not subtle about it.

That hasn’t stopped the problem. Yaba, a methamphetamine tablet, is widely used across Thailand. It’s cheap, easy to find, and devastatingly addictive. It has torn through rural communities for decades.

Kratom is a different story. It’s a local plant with mild stimulant effects. Farmers and labourers have chewed it for generations. It was illegal for years but was decriminalised in 2021. That was a rare moment of pragmatism from Thai authorities.

Cannabis was also legalised in 2022, then partially walked back in 2024. The rules are still unclear. Many Thais are confused about what is and isn’t permitted. That confusion doesn’t help anyone.

The drug problem in rural Thailand is largely a poverty problem. Young men with no jobs and no prospects are easy recruits. Sagon is not unusual. He’s just more visible because we know him.

Enforcement is inconsistent. The law is severe on paper. In practice it depends on who you are, who you know, and whether someone has had words with the right person. Sound familiar?

Family Farms and Big Commercial Farms in Thailand Compared

Most Thai farms are small. The average holding is around three to four rai. That’s less than an acre. Families have farmed the same plots for generations. It’s subsistence farming with a little left over to sell.

Life on a small farm is hard. Everything depends on the weather, the harvest, and the market price that year. There’s no buffer. A bad season means a bad year. There’s no insurance and little government support.

Big commercial farms are a different world. Agribusiness has moved into Thailand in a serious way. Large companies grow rice, sugar, cassava, and rubber on an industrial scale. They have machinery, irrigation, and market access that small farmers can only dream of.

The lamyai, or longan, is a good example of the contrast. Small family farms like Sagon’s mother tend their trees by hand. They know every tree. Harvest is a family effort. It’s labour intensive but the quality is high.

Commercial longan farms operate differently. They manage hundreds of rai, use chemical inputs, and sell direct to exporters. The fruit is uniform, the margins are thin, and the workers are hired labour. Nobody knows every tree.

Small farmers struggle to compete on price. But they often win on quality. Niche markets, organic certification, and direct selling to local buyers are keeping some family farms alive. It’s a tough fight though.

The bigger threat is land. Property prices are rising across Thailand. Developers are circling agricultural land. Many older farmers have no children willing to take over. When they go, the land often goes with them.

Sagon’s mother is 74. Her three-rai lamyai farm has probably been in the family for decades. Sagon helps out of duty. But what happens to that farm in ten years is

About Matt Owens Rees

My focus group took time to develop but is now paying dividends. I can bounce ideas off Thais from varying social classes. From poor farmers and construction workers to those working in offices and shops. From bankers to well-off business owners.

My focus group took time to develop but is now paying dividends. I can bounce ideas off Thais from varying social classes. From poor farmers and construction workers to those working in offices and shops. From bankers to well-off business owners.

The group includes members of the so-called hi-so elite. Interaction sometimes needs to be one-to-one as Thais are cautious expressing their views in front of their other countrymen.

As a long-term expatriate and cultural anthropologist living in Thailand for over 20 years, I have learned that to understand this country and to integrate better with its people and culture, it’s important to observe and listen rather than doing all the talking oneself.

After all, God gave us two eyes and two ears but only ONE mouth. Just last month, a construction worker and a banker gave me opposite views on the recent constitutional referendum – and I learn from these comments rather than picking a side.

Through field research and discussions with Thais, either in normal conversation or in the lecture theatre, Matt presents a rich picture of the real Thailand, warts and all.

He has written extensively on Thais and Thailand with 20 published books already available in ebook and print format.

Despite not being similar in style, his books reflect on some of the observations in “Mai Pen Rai Means Never Mind.” In his opinion, the best introductory book on Thais and Thailand. Written by Carol Hollinger in 1965, its insights are still very revealing and up to date.

Sadly, Hollinger passed away at 45 years old before she could see her best-selling book in print. Matt also then lost an opportunity to collaborate with her on a new book on the concept of Face in Thailand.

A Profile of Carol Hollinger

Mai Pen Rai Means Never Mind, Carol’s flagship book, is an informative and accurate read. It delves deeply into the psyche of a nation that really hasn’t changed all that much. The nation has changed, the psyche has not.

Mai Pen Rai Means Never Mind records the time Hollinger spent in Bangkok in the 60s. First as a housewife, then as a teacher at The American University, and then at Chulalongkorn University.

At Chula, a self-deprecating Hollinger immerses herself in Thai culture. She lectures hundreds of students and bumbles her way through the university’s comic bureaucracy.

Hollinger explains with plenty of colourful anecdotes what life was like back then for an American in Thailand.

“The Thais present a unanimously bland face to the foreigners and are past masters of double talk. But among themselves there were few secrets, for they were impossible to keep. Every Thai is a natural spy, information gleaned in servants’ quarters sped around Bangkok in minutes.”

Hollinger learns of an upcoming coup when her hi-so friends warn her to ensure her water jars are full. The local water supply gets switched off when coups occur.

“The day before Marshal Sarit took over the country, Samnieng charged into our home. She wanted to satisfy herself that my klong jars were full of water ready for the emergency.”

Hollinger’s account is a revelation. She recorded a time when the kingdom had moved on from poor families partying in run-down wooden houses.

Even the minutiae of day-to-day academic life was different.

Here’s an account of Farming in Thailand

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agriculture_in_Thailand

and readers may like the following post I wrote and compare it to this post.

https://understanding-thailand.com/what-happened-to-kitaloo/