Look Behind the Bamboo Curtain and you’ll often be surprised by what you find. Things are seldom what they seem in Thailand.
The carpenter had left some papers on top of a corner cabinet he’d almost finished building. He’d put away his tools, cleaned where he’d been working, and was making ready to go home.
For some reason, I thought it odd that he’d not collected up his plans.
So, I lifted them up and realised why he’d left them there.
There was a deep and very visible scratch across the top of the unit. A tool must have been accidentally pulled across it.
A careless claw of metal had carved a cruel crease across the cabinet’s crown.
His face was expressionless but he knew the damage was not repairable. He would have to replace the top.
No apology. If I’d not spotted the damage before he left, he’d have insisted, when returning the next day that it was nothing to do with him. That I had defaced their design, damaged their dignity.
Making Mistakes & Not Losing Face
You have to watch out for workers covering their mistakes. It happens in offices too as we shall see.
Not losing face and not owning up to a mistake is frustrating for foreigners to experience. For outsiders, it’s baffling, bemusing, and often bitterly frustrating.
Thais would have thought the worker’s actions were quite normal. You will see Thais checking and watching carefully everything a worker does. Scrutinising silently, surveying steadily, they safeguard against slip-ups.
Tomorrow, we step from scratched surfaces to ceremonial splendour—where royal grace meets graduate glamour, and a muddled email can’t mask the magic of the moment.
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