A week ago I travelled to Bangkok to collect my oldest son, Nathan, who was returning home for Christmas holidays from his international school in Chiang Mai. (Nathan travelled to Bangkok with a friend who has a daughter at the same school.) Nathan and I then caught the night train back to Nakhon Si Thammarat. We've caught the train many times so far, and have never really had a problem, but this time we had booked tickets at the end of the carriage right next to the door which leads to the external door for the carriage and to the next carriage. Some of these doors close automatically, but not this one. It had to be manually shut by hand.
I found it extremely interesting to note that almost no-one bothered to shut it. Despite a sign on the door politely requesting all to shut the door, very few did so. Bothered by the loud noise from the track, the lady across the aisle from us, my son and I shut the door each time a person walked past and left the door open after him/her. We started asking the railway employees to shut the door after them but to little effect. One young fellow did so twice, while a waitress said "Sure!" and then totally ignored our request!
Intrigued by this behaviour, I started counting. In the space of one hour, thirty people opened the door and walked through without closing it. The door was shut only four times, twice by young railway employees who did what we asked (well at least that time, anyway), and twice by the same (and only) European lady to pass by. I also observed that the older the Thai person was, and the higher the person's status, the less likely they were to be bothered to close the train door. So we kept popping up and down like jack-in-a-boxes every couple of minutes as someone passed by. Three times during that night I awoke choking on diesel fumes from outside, as we stopped at a station and - yes, you guessed it - someone had left the door open again.
I felt this experience was a good reinforcement of my understanding of Thai culture. Many cultural observers comment that to Thai people, three of the most important values are convenience, comfort and fun. Obviously it wasn't convenient to close the door behind them, nor was it fun! And since their own comfort wasn't on the line, then it wasn't a problem to them. Another important value is one of hierarchy. The more senior a person is, the less they feel they should do menial tasks, especially for those of low status. Obviously two foreign travellers and one middle-aged lady were considered to have less status than that of those moving back and forward throughout the train.
It made me appreciate the Christian heritage we have in the west, where the "golden rule" as taught by Jesus is still well known and practised: "Do to others as you would have them do to you."
