Things we learned while in Thailand

- most people own their business but the woman are running them, we have no idea where the men are
- Thai's rarely cook at home, most homes only have a burner, no stove
- there's no line between work/family when you own a business. You will see owners and their families eating, sleeping, watching tv, helping their children with homework, breast feeding while at work
- business owners keep VERY long hours which explains above comment, it's not uncommon for them to be open 0800-2200 or later, especially if they work in tourism
- for every foreigner they hire, they must employee 4 Thais
- only Thai citizens can own land
- the surgical masks aren't to prevent disease it's to help block out the astronomical amount of fumes/exhaust they have
- the standard of cleanliness is zero, there is never soap in public places, washing of hands is not a priority, they don't cover their mouths when they cough or sneeze
- children are only required to attend 9 years of school
- the culture is non-confrontational and are generally willing to help whenever they can
- traffic rules (red lights, stop signs, shoulders) are just a suggestion, for a laid back society they are very aggressive drivers but honking is only used as a warning (ie if a large vehicle is passing a scooter) and we saw no accidents, near accidents or even screeching tires - tourists on scooters is a whole other story
- child safety is on a different level. Babies on scooters without helmets, infants left unattended on couches, beds, no seat belts, car seats, just sitting on a parents lap. This is actual a bit amusing to me as I've recently seen first hand how American moms fret over everything like the kid is porcelain and the children here turn out just fine without all the overage
- Thais are very sociable people, they have many friends and will spend all day with them or talking to them
- most tourists are 20-24 year old partying Europeans/Australians or old dirty Western men looking for a Thai wife (we encountered more of the latter then we would have liked)
- only Chinese inspired dishes are eaten with chopsticks (pad Thai) most dishes are eaten with a fork or their hands (sticky rice)
- being a is Monk is not a life long commitment and you can leave the order and return
- police presences is minimal and from what we saw rules are only enforced to foreigners
- Wat are scared places but Wat parking lots are an ok place to hawk tourists

This is a list of things we learned through our experiences in our short time here. We were mostly in built up areas and the although we tried to engage many locals in conversation the only ones who could speak enough English were tour guides and such so we do realize some of these things might not be true for the whole country.