Disclaimer: all of the following are just my observations as a transient outsider. I could be totally off. I'm only sharing them because they are of a different style from whatever I read about Thailand before coming.
Thai culture has an embedded humility and religious (Theravada Buddhist) devotion that gives the country a natural warmth and hospitality. Some cashiers returned change with their left hand holding their right elbow, like a temple offering. There's a lot of smiling, bowing, and head-nodding. The cadence of "Kab Kuhn KaaAAAA(b)" (Thank you) is peppy and sing-songy.
The traditional Thai string instrument is the Pin has such a non-cheesy, motivational vibe. Reminds me of surf rock but more sacred.
The posture is slightly slumping in an endearing way, people being soft to each other and bowing. The bougier cafes in Chiang Mai were very soft spoken, as opposed to the loud, peppy, gregarious brand of hospitality you might find in other countries.
An example of a Thai song that plays at a young / trendy cafe. The devotional strain and sliding vocals remind me of South Indian music.
Chiang Mai is fully of ultra-artisinal third-wave coffee shops
Roast8ry had some of the best coffee I’ve ever tasted— both black and mixed. I am convinced there’s a coffee spirit that is pleased when the coffee plant is treated well and the coffee is brewed with ceremonial levels of care (more on this later.) The effect of the coffee is contingent on the happiness of the coffee spirit. I had legitimate euphoria from every Roast8ry coffee I drank.
The architecture of their flagship store is also wonderful. Big, rectangular, concrete, that gives it a quiet stability and insulates it well from the chaotic street (and calms the chaos of the caffeinated mind)
One exciting direction of Thai culture is, like all developing countries, the integration of folk and contemporary.
(The other exciting direction would be full-folk-no-contemporary. Both timelines have their pros and cons.)
If I can get esoteric for a moment, I see the folk culture and language of a people as revealing the personality of the spirit or archai of that people. More specifically, there is a feeling of different biomes, a feeling of different materials, of different forms, of different phonemes, of different mythologies, that all weave together to form a feeling of an overall spirit of a people.
I would think that these cultural spirits or personalities do not want to be fully abandoned for an economically and instagramically optimal Asian desert shop aesthetic. I would think they’d approach globalism in a more gentle way, mixing with other cultural spirits in in a more balanced give and take, rather than one aesthetic totally replacing another.
Anyway, I found the folk-contemporary mix beautifully embodied by Kalm Village in Chiang Mai. You can sense how much love was put into this place.
They emphasize traditional Thai feeling, materials, and crafts like teakwood and wicker. And again, these materials have a certain personality that many people over-focused on their scientific properties are losing sensitivity to. This is probably obvious to those with a healthy worldview who are more in contact with reality. But I needed it spelled out to me in the past and so I'm spelling it out to you now.
