Claims that the Rural Thai people are “peaceful” are based, in part, on a remarkable study conducted by Phillips (1965) between 1956 and 1958 in a village in Central Thailand. The nonviolence that Phillips recorded in Bang Chan was a result of the Buddhist values of the people and the… Continue reading…
Sometimes very simple, homespun blog entries give very fine portraits of people and places. Recent posts by a New Zealand man about his adopted home in Rural Thailand provide a good example. The blogger, who goes by MeMock, was traveling in Australia and New Zealand with his Thai wife and… Continue reading…
Though his corruption was legendary, Thaksin Shinawatra, the former Prime Minister of Thailand, was quite popular with the Rural Thai people, the majority of the electorate in that nation. When the Thai military removed him from power on September 19, 2006, the rationale for the coup by his opponents was… Continue reading…
Until the 1970s, rural Thailand’s Suphanburi Province, located only 100 km north of Bangkok, was extremely isolated from the rest of the country. The province was the butt of jokes by other Thai people because their roads were either nonexistent or in such bad condition as to be virtually impassable…. Continue reading…
Over the next week or two, villages throughout rural Thailand will be holding kathina ceremonies—events that reinforce commitments to such Buddhist values as generosity, selflessness, and charity. The highlight of the kathina ceremony, which lasts from one to three days, is the presentation of gifts and new robes to the… Continue reading…
The intensity of local political elections in Rural Thailand can place immense stresses on Thai women, who have to maintain harmony within and between communities. In contrast to other authors, who see local Thai politics as primarily a male preserve, Katherine Bowie recognizes, in a recent journal article, the important… Continue reading…
A rural Thai secondary school recently opened a third toilet, between the boys and the girls rooms, for students who feel they are transsexuals. A BBC story last week on the new arrangement in the community of Kampang includes a photo of the icon for the transgendered toilet: a human… Continue reading…
Rural Thai farmers are coping with increased costs of fuel by abandoning their machinery and relearning how to use water buffaloes to plough their rice fields. According to a news report last Saturday, diesel tractors have been used commonly all over the Thai countryside in recent decades, but with the… Continue reading…
Rural Thai farmers are coping with increased costs of fuel by abandoning their machinery and relearning how to use water buffaloes to plough their rice fields. According to a news report last Saturday, diesel tractors have been used commonly all over the Thai countryside in recent decades, but with the… Continue reading…
Banharn Silpa-archa, a corrupt politician from rural Thailand, is as skilled in fostering local pride as he is in fighting yaa baa, the local name for methamphetamine. Yoshinori Nishizaki, who wrote a fascinating article a few months ago about Banharn’s nonviolent campaign to get the young rural Thai people to… Continue reading…
