Tardy Thais

October 21, 2011

I get very annoyed with Thai people and their complete lack of respect for being somewhere on time. I make sure that I get to an appointment on time and only in extreme circumstances am I late. But Thais are almost invariably late, and usually they don’t apologize or explain!

Even girlfriends just arrive with a sweet smile and a “Hello darling”; no apology even if we’ve missed the start of a movie. It is very disrespectful to expats who are waiting for them.

Official recognition that 'Thai time' does exist

And they seem to have so many different ways and words for telling the time—trying to understand what is the proper meeting time is very confusing; sometimes I am not even sure whether they mean daytime or evening!

Red Sox

Thais are notorious for their casual attitude towards timekeeping; this is unlikely to improve, so you have to expect it and try not to raise your blood pressure every time. As for the different methods of telling time, the 24-hour clock is the official system, used on TV and radio and official documents. However, in everyday conversation this is usually replaced by the colloquial system, which basically breaks the day into four quarters, and uses traditional words to differentiate between the segments. Actually it isn’t difficult to learn, and you can then fix an accurate meeting time with a girlfriend, as trying to translate Thai colloquial to farang-understandable sometimes leads to errors. She’ll still be late, but you will know exactly how late.