It's almost impossible to visit a country like Thailand and not be completely ignorant of many of their cultural beliefs. Your faux pas will become strikingly clear if you're lucky enough, as we've been, to have a lovely Thai friend willing to educate you.
For as long as we've been traveling to Asia we've always washed our clothes (most often underwear) in the room and hung them out to dry in any convenient place ie trees outside our window, bed posts, shower rods & curtain rods. On one particular day we were using a curtain rod as our clothes hanger. This situated our underwear somewhere in the vicinity of about 7 feet above the floor.
Our lovely young Thai friend happened to be visiting us that day and a few minutes after her arrival we noticed that something was causing her a bit of angst. Her eyes opened wide as she gazed agonizingly at the apparel hanging at the top of the curtains. What could be wrong?
Well, in any Asian culture the head is the most sacred part of one's body. No patting little children on the head please! To carry this out even further no garment worn around the lower parts of the body should ever be hung out to dry at a height that would exceed the height of a normal person's head.
In our ignorance as Westerners our first reaction was....what...you want me to bring those briefs down? This was followed by our sheepishly buying a floor style clothes rack. When in Rome!
For as long as we've been traveling to Asia we've always washed our clothes (most often underwear) in the room and hung them out to dry in any convenient place ie trees outside our window, bed posts, shower rods & curtain rods. On one particular day we were using a curtain rod as our clothes hanger. This situated our underwear somewhere in the vicinity of about 7 feet above the floor.
Our lovely young Thai friend happened to be visiting us that day and a few minutes after her arrival we noticed that something was causing her a bit of angst. Her eyes opened wide as she gazed agonizingly at the apparel hanging at the top of the curtains. What could be wrong?
Well, in any Asian culture the head is the most sacred part of one's body. No patting little children on the head please! To carry this out even further no garment worn around the lower parts of the body should ever be hung out to dry at a height that would exceed the height of a normal person's head.
In our ignorance as Westerners our first reaction was....what...you want me to bring those briefs down? This was followed by our sheepishly buying a floor style clothes rack. When in Rome!
