Foreigners in Thailand: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

In Southeast Asia’s most welcoming country, the famous Smile is too often put to the test

Aung Htwe Nyunt Saw photo

[It has been unsettling, and somewhat surreal, to witness the unfolding crisis of the second Trump U.S. presidency—and its impact on my home country of Canada—from across the ocean in Thailand, where my husband and I have been since January. As this year marks the twenty-fifth anniversary of my first trip to the Land of Smiles, I am taking a break from domestic affairs here to share some reflections on this country and the foreigners who love it.]

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BANGKOK—Late in the evening on February 2, 2000, seventeen hours after departing from Vancouver with a brief stopover in Seoul, I landed in Thailand for the first time. Dragging my weary bones though customs, I retrieved my suitcase and—ignoring the usual tourist advisories about unscrupulous cab drivers—took the long taxi ride from Don Mueang International Airport into the city, finally stopping in the bustling Central Business District better known as Sathorn.

Having turned thirty-six a few months earlier, I had never been to Southeast Asia or anywhere else on this side of the Pacific. And for a self-employed freelance writer, this would not be a “vacation” in the usual sense. Instead, it would turn into the biggest adventure of my life.

I had chosen Thailand for many reasons—not least the promise of encountering, in their native land, more of the enchanting young men like those I had met during my various other travels and nightlife escapades over the previous decade. These Thai men—supported by enthusiastic testimonials from a few Canadian friends who had been there—had led me to their country with what now seems a highly sophisticated, artful form of eroto-aesthetic cultural ambassadorship.

Enthralling me with their stories, they spoke of Thailand’s monolithic monoculture under Theravada Buddhism and its expression in daily life as both religion and philosophy, its saffron-robed monks a calming presence in the public sphere. They testified as to the enduring influence of the Chakri dynasty and the people’s love for Rama IX King Bhumibol, the planet’s only reigning monarch to have served longer than Queen Elizabeth II. They boasted of Thailand’s status as the only SE Asian country never to have been colonized while rhapsodizing about the rich bio- and cultural diversity of its vast geography—which, beyond the urban attractions of Bangkok, offered everything from tropical beaches and forested parks (promising frequent contact with elephants and monkeys) to glittering temples and other breathtaking wonders of architectural antiquity. And they enthused about its many sensuous delights, from its delicious cuisine to its aromatic jasmine, frangipani, and other exotic flowers, and the importance of water as a regenerative force in Thai daily life. As for the beguiling but not-so-discreet charms of Thailand’s hot and gorgeous young men, I suppose they figured I needed no briefing. (I’d met them, hadn’t I?)

I had to see “Amazing Thailand” for myself, to believe it. The explorer in me was eager to discover a country containing four such distinctive regions within its elephant head-shaped land mass: the Central plains encompassing Bangkok and the river basin of the mighty Chao Phraya; the mountainous Lanna kingdom of the North, with its hill tribes near Chiang Mai and Chiang Rai; the Isaan of the Northeast with its distinctive dialects, music and food, sprinkled with Khmer and Lao influences; and the Southern end of the isthmus (the “trunk”), with its destination islands and their sandy beaches, and its Muslim communities nestled along the Malaysian border. And all this didn’t even include the “ears” of the West, with Kanchanaburi’s legendary Bridge on the River Kwai near the Burma border, and the coastal East of Chonburi, Rayong and the islands of the northern Gulf.

As I recall, the affluent Thai guys I met in Vancouver, New York, London, and Amsterdam said very little about the darker aspects of their country. But I would learn about these things soon enough, first as a tourist and then as a resident.

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To describe that first visit twenty-five years ago as a life-changing event would be an understatement: what began as a ten-week journey turned into an expatriate self-exile of nearly four years. Living in Thailand was a mind-blowing and humbling experience. By presenting a culture so different from that of my own Western, Euro-rationalist, Roman Catholic upbringing, the Kingdom exposed my limitations, revealing the uglier side of my middle-class white privilege and sense of entitlement. It provided the kind of hard lessons that had somehow eluded me back home, where I presumed to be master of my own environment: lessons, for example, about the futility of impatience (and how differently people of different cultures regard the concept of time), how dramatically economic inequality can affect relationships, and how the simplest of gestures can just as easily destroy as improve a life.

By the autumn of 2003, I had met the person I would marry (not Thai) and come to cherish my Canadian citizenship so much that I would never again take it for granted. Missing home, I gave up the expat life and returned to Vancouver. My partner would follow me, through immigration, a year later. But despite the hard lessons, I couldn’t keep away. Despite the Kingdom’s darker aspects—which included deep class divisions, a history of violent crackdowns on civic protests, ongoing political and police corruption, the power of sex trade economics, and the enabling of human and drug trafficking—the beauty of Thailand and the warmth of its people, their basic kindness, and their collective and inclusive pride in their culture (with its unshakable sense of what it means to be Thai), kept drawing me back over the decades. The same was true for my husband, a native of Burma/Myanmar’s Karen State for whom Thailand, even under occasional military rule, had provided welcome refuge from the brutal dictatorship of his native land. Today, we feel such a karmic debt to the country that brought us together that we cannot help but regard it as a kind of second home.

We are not alone in this feeling. A lot of other foreigners—tens of millions a year, in fact—enjoy spending time here, as well. It’s getting a bit crowded.

Removing the rose-tinted glasses

Every foreigner who has ever fallen in love with an Asian Arcadia like Thailand goes through what Ian Buruma, in The Missionary and the Libertine: Love and War in East and West (2001), described as a honeymoon phase with their newly discovered paradise. Their own private Shangri-la can do no wrong: everything is wonderful, and every Thai smile is beautiful and genuine. (One’s eyes tend not to see what they’d rather not see while one is escaping work-related drudgery or the boredom of life back home.) But like anywhere else, the longer one stays in Thailand and the more one experiences while picking up more of the language—or, at least, some of its colourful aphorisms—the quicker those illusions disappear and reality sets in.

A human rights advocate, for example, soon discovers inconsistency in the Kingdom’s approach to the issues. Much has been made, and rightfully so, of Thailand’s superior medical services for trans people and of its progressive policies around LGBTQ+ issues, thanks to Thai Buddhism’s more open approach to gender diversity and homosexuality. Three weeks after we arrived this year, the first legal gay marriages in Southeast Asia took place in Bangkok. A big step forward, to be sure. But on other human rights files, Thailand’s record leaves something to be desired.

Recent condemnation from the European Union has highlighted the Kingdom’s ongoing struggle with two sensitive issues: public commentary about the monarchy and relations with its top trading partner. In Thailand, criticism of the royal family is subject to criminal prosecution under the country’s lèse-majesté law, one of the world’s harshest criminal defamation laws. The EU has cited this legislation for violating the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. It has also condemned Thailand for deporting at least 40 Uyghur refugees to China where, as the Bangkok Post put it, “they face risks of arbitrary detention, torture and serious human rights violations, despite offers from other safe countries to resettle them.” More on China a bit later.

A well-worn welcome mat

Tourism has long been the country’s number one industry, the major driver for Thailand’s economy. Some say its origins lie in the Kingdom’s unique history as a non-colony—good fortune attributed partly to Britain and France’s nineteenth century agreement that a neutral country in SE Asia was advantageous for them both, and partly to King Chulalongkorn’s gift for international relations. In his travels overseas, Rama V was Siam’s most prolific and persuasive ambassador, opening up the country to all manner of business and diplomacy. And the world, beginning with the likes of Joseph Conrad and William Somerset Maugham, heeded his call. The Oriental Hotel soon became the place to see and be seen during a visit to Bangkok. (These days, a single glass of champagne in the Authors Lounge will set you back US$55.)

But the real push to “discover” this country began a couple of decades after Siam was renamed Thailand (or prathet Thai, which means “Land of the Free”) in 1939. At the end of the 1950s, the government established the Tourism Organization of Thailand, later renamed Tourism Authority of Thailand (TAT). In those days, the Kingdom was drawing around 40,000 foreign visitors annually. Four decades later, the year I first landed, that number was up to 11.2 million. At the time, the country was still reeling from the 1997 Asian financial crisis—an economic disaster triggered by the collapse of the Thai baht, which led to a decline in currency values, stock markets, and other asset prices throughout the region. So tourism promotion was ramped up as a way of accelerating the country’s recovery. The same thing happened two decades later, following the global shutdown resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic.

This year, the TAT’s goal for total tourist visits would increase the 2000 figure almost four-fold. In a country with a total population of 71.7 million as of 2023, the TAT is aiming to attract 40 million visitors in 2025—with up to nine million of those coming from China. The People’s Republic is Thailand’s number one trading partner, with investments exceeding US$100 billion. It also remains the largest source of tourist visits. That status seemed threatened in January, when a Chinese actor was kidnapped after landing in Bangkok and immediately driven to the border and taken to a cyber scam call centre in Myanmar, prompting panic cancellations of Thailand visits by Chinese tourists.

But China has since praised Thailand for its efforts to combat the scam centres, and—though the final number of Chinese visits this year could fall short of the goal by a couple of million—the panic has receded. Meanwhile, the Thai government’s decision to return Uyghur refugees to China can be seen as part of a long-standing strategy of playing ball with critical regional partners to keep relations smooth.

The decaying beach “paradise”

Thailand’s aggressive tourism policy suggests that, when it comes to attracting the almighty dollar, there is no “off” switch. The question of how much is too much, in terms of tourist volumes, rarely seems to come up unless something happens to cause Thailand to lose face in the international community. This is especially evident in the Kingdom’s promotion of its destination island getaways.

Hollywood has long played a role in drawing foreigners to Thailand’s beach resorts. In 1974, The Man with the Golden Gun dazzled viewers with its sweeping aerial views of the towering limestone crags in Phang Nga Bay, where Khao Phing Kan is now known as “James Bond Island.” In 1999, months before I landed, the Hollywood machine was at it again in the South, chewing up scenery with gorgeous views of Maya Bay and the rest of the Koh Phi Phi island group in the film version of Alex Garland’s novel, The Beach, starring Leonardo DiCaprio.

Nearly five years before the Indian Ocean tsunami that destroyed this oasis and killed more than 2,000 people in the area, I was part of the initial tourist invasion of Koh Phi Phi that followed production of “The Beach” and preceded the film’s release here by a few weeks. Even then, the numbers seemed to be getting out of hand. But after the tsunami, the recovery effort drew such broad international support that Koh Phi Phi’s rebuilding was complete within a couple of years and more tourists showed up than ever before. Soon, the “DiCaprio effect” was destroying the coral reef in Maya Bay as boatload after boatload of tourists kept dropping anchor. Today, swimming is not permitted in Maya Bay, which is also closed for two months during the rainy season. Sea life and the coral reef are slowly recovering. But not far away, other parts of Krabi province have joined Koh Phi Phi’s ranks as once-idyllic locations ruined by tourism. It was our misfortune to have made that discovery this year.

I had first gone to Krabi on a solo trip in 2014. Back then, Krabi town was popular with tourists but retained its local charm and identity. Eleven years later, the downtown strip was unrecognizable. The whole area seemed to have become a southern satellite of Pattaya, SE Asia’s biggest red light district long notorious for its out-of-control excess. The strip was filled with Western fast food outlets, and most of the Thai food eateries had been taken over by Indian owners and operators. There was an endless string of loud drinking holes catering to the Russians, Indians, and other foreigners who had arrived by the hundreds. Every night, the sidewalks were filled with drunken tourists, the main beach turned into a pissing hole for a few of them. When we signed up for a boat tour of the islands one morning and were brought to the beach to await our longtail, we were greeted by a crowd of several hundred, perhaps even a thousand, other tourists also awaiting their boats.

I had seen this effect before with another major Thai beach destination. Back in 2002 I wrote a travel piece for The Nation, the Bangkok daily newspaper where I worked as a sub editor, about the decline of Koh Samui caused by overexposure. (“Island from Hell,” I had headlined it. Much to my surprise, given the advertising revenue The Nation received from the tourism industry, the headline remained.) In the piece, I described several incidents during a three-night stay on Samui in which bad foreigner behaviour ruined the experience of being there.

First, there was a Thai hotel manager’s failure to meet us for drinks because he was fighting for his life in the hospital after being hit by a drunken American on a motorbike while crossing the street earlier that day. Then there was the young European man we saw lying on the ground outside a Chaweng Beach nightclub, convulsing from an overdose. The next morning, we saw two Mediterranean men harassing a Thai woman at a travel agency until someone threatened to call the police. Finally, there was the drunk and shirtless British soccer hooligan who staggered into our restaurant full of stench and, uninvited, seated himself at our table.

After these and other incidents over three days, I finally understood the shocking rudeness of the Thai woman who, on my first day in Samui, wasn’t in the mood for complaints while organizing shuttle rides into town. When I told her I wouldn’t get on a songtaew because there were too many people crammed onto it already, she snapped: “Do you want to ride or walk?” I got on. You know things are getting bad when the locals let down their guard and fail to radiate the usual patented Thai charm. I had thought then that Koh Samui had reached critical mass and could not possibly take any more tourists. But what do I know?

Nearly a quarter century later, shoot locations for the third season of a popular HBO miniseries, The White Lotus, which takes place in Thailand, include Koh Samui (Four Seasons Resort), as well as Phuket and Bangkok—a deliberate strategy for drawing more tourists. (This year’s cast includes Buri Ram native Lisa Manobal, aka “Lisa”, a member of the South Korean girl group Blackpink. Lisa’s video for “Rockstar,” filmed in Bangkok’s Chinatown district, has probably contributed to tourist overcrowding in the Yaowarat night market, if the throngs of young people we encountered there on a recent visit were any indication.)

How to be a good visitor…or not

Because of its reputation as a warm and welcoming place, where the Buddhist wisdom of mai pen rai (“don’t worry/never mind/it doesn’t matter”) governs social relations, Thailand has always attracted kind-hearted people from abroad. The Kingdom’s “good foreigners” include, for example, student volunteers and development workers who help build schools and hospitals in remote rural areas, international aid people who assist with refugees, migrant workers and other border issues, and countless other foreigners involved with joint venture business projects and cross-cultural exchanges based on mutual understanding and the principle of decolonization. There are also many “good foreigner” eco-tourists who make a point of supporting only local businesses while leaving as small a footprint as possible.

But the same reason it attracts good people with its openness also makes Thailand a magnet for the low-life losers, those ethically challenged people who take advantage of Thai good will because they know they can; racist assholes who run roughshod through a foreign country they neither respect nor understand. Many a tourist of this ilk has fallen afoul of Thai law by stupidly disrespecting religion (climbing on Buddha statues, taking sexualized “selfies” with them) or engaging in deliberate criminal behaviour by shoplifting, pulling dine-and-dash restaurant visits, assaulting Thai locals after cultural misunderstandings, and countless other offences. Most incidents occur in well-trod places like Pattaya, Phuket, Samui, and pockets of Bangkok or Chiang Mai that are easily avoided. (I will not post examples here. If you’re really curious to see this kind of farang in action, just Google “bad foreigners in Thailand” and you’ll find videos from YouTube, Instagram, TikTok and other social media showing human behaviour at its most bottom-of-the-barrel pathetic.)

For some time, Thailand has tried to attract more high-end, “quality” tourists through investment in more five-star hotels. (As if rich people never misbehave.) Critics suggest that, while better screening of problem tourists might not be feasible, the Kingdom should at least consider enacting stricter guidelines for deportation.

No nationality has a monopoly on bad behaviour, but bad foreigner stories in Thailand are often associated with one country or another. In Pattaya, news reports in February showed an alarming number of people sleeping on the beach rather than renting hotel rooms. Many locals assumed they were Indian tourists; authorities later debunked this assumption, confirming that the beach sleepers were actually migrant workers from Bangladesh, Myanmar, Nepal and Sri Lanka. One country making news here this year for all the wrong reasons, thanks to a recent diplomatic contretemps in the small northern town of Pai in Mae Hong Son province, has been Israel.

What began as a few cases of bad tourists (four Israelis broke into and vandalized a local hospital’s emergency room, and two others were arrested for working without permits) soon accelerated with dreary predictability as pro-Palestine activists took to social media and began spreading false rumours based on wildly inaccurate claims: that there were 30,000 Israelis living in the area, that Israelis were colonizing the town by taking over local businesses, and that the presence of a synagogue suggested that Israelis were coveting Pai as a new “promised land.”

Sure enough, mainstream Thai media began reporting these claims uncritically, and the anti-Semitic notices at local businesses (“No Israelis”) soon followed. In response, tourist police went on the record to dismiss the “promised land” and other claims while confirming that only seven dozen or so Israelis are ever in Pai at one time. Then a visit to Pai by Israel’s ambassador to Thailand, Orna Sagiv, and Thai Deputy Prime Minister and Interior Minister Anutin Charnvirakul, led to discussions calling for better mutual cultural understanding.

Community overreaction was undeniable, but much of the problem appeared to have been the result of Israeli ignorance of Thai culture. You are not going to win over the locals by, for example, walking shirtless in public, speaking too loudly in the street, ordering food but refusing to pay if you don’t like it, and littering the public sphere with your memorial stickers of hostages and fallen soldiers from your country’s war with Hamas. The hospital invasion/vandalism and illegal work incidents only triggered simmering local resentment of such entitled farang behaviour. For their part, the Israelis—some of whom, reportedly, were on leave from the war—did themselves no favours by alienating their hosts: with their government globally condemned for the ongoing massacre in Gaza, behaving respectfully and keeping a low profile in Pai would have been the smart thing to do.

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I am not writing this out of any sense of moral superiority. I still make mistakes and am all too aware that my Thai language skills never developed beyond the most basic conversation subjects. But Thailand is one of the easiest places in the world to get along with the locals if you show basic respect and interest in their culture. True, the fact that my Burmese Canadian husband is mistaken for Thai and speaks the language fluently gives me an advantage. But the friendliness and good will that he and I both receive daily from total strangers—just for treating others as we would wish to be treated ourselves—is deeply affecting and all too easy to pay forward. And why wouldn’t it be? We’ve been granted the privilege of enjoying this country and all it has to offer, including its capacity to surprise with the simplest of pleasures.

Once it was finding out during our evening walk that the city had built an overpass connector linking our two favourite parks, Lumphini and Benjakitti. (The latter features a skywalk that snakes through the park above a leafy marshland and ends beneath a canopy of rain trees, the vertical bars in its railings dimly illuminated at night.) Another time, across the Chao Phraya in Thonburi, it was learning that we could enjoy a quiet, lazy Sunday afternoon boat ride through the neighbourhood khlongs behind the Floating Market. And then another time, during a beach trip to Koh Chang, it was sitting on our deck just before sunset and being treated to the sight of two hornbills, an endangered bird species, perching in the mangroves in front of us.

“Amazing Thailand,” indeed.