About Thailand
The People of Thailand
Sixty-six million people, and the Thailand most visitors see is one of four. The northeast alone holds about a third of the country and almost none of its tourism; the centre holds the capital, the language everyone is taught and the food that travelled abroad. Knowing which one you are standing in explains a great deal.
The fact underneath everything else
Never anybody's colony.
Every one of Thailand's neighbours spent part of the last two centuries under a European power. Siam did not, and it is the only country in Southeast Asia that can say so. It kept its independence by giving ground at the edges: territory ceded to Britain and France, trade rights granted, and legal jurisdiction over foreigners surrendered under a series of unequal treaties.
What that left is a country with an unbroken monarchy, its own legal and administrative tradition, and a script and calendar that were never displaced. It is also why Thai national confidence reads differently from the post-colonial confidence of its neighbours.
- Population
- About 66 million
- Provinces
- 77, plus Bangkok
- In the northeast
- Roughly a third of everyone
- Calendar year
- 543 ahead: 2026 is BE 2569
Four regions, four identities
-
Isan, the northeast
About a third of the country
The Khorat plateau, on the Lao and Cambodian borders. Its language is close enough to Lao to be mutually intelligible, its food is the sharpest and hottest in Thailand, and it is the least visited region by a very wide margin. Most of the people you meet working in Bangkok and on the islands are from here.
-
The centre
Bangkok and the rice plain
The political, economic and linguistic default. Central Thai is the language of school and television, and the version of Thai food that travelled abroad is this one. Bangkok is many times the size of the second city, which shapes everything about how the country works.
Guide -
The north
The old Lanna kingdom
Chiang Mai and the mountains, a separate kingdom until the late nineteenth century and still distinct in language, script tradition, temple architecture and food. The hill communities above the valleys, among them Karen, Hmong, Akha, Lahu and Lisu, are separate peoples again with their own languages.
Guide -
The south
The peninsula
Fast, clipped southern Thai on both coasts, and in the four provinces on the Malaysian border a Malay-speaking Muslim majority. The Chinese-Thai presence is strong here too, and Phuket Town's Sino-Portuguese shophouses are what that looks like in architecture.
Guide
Five ideas that explain the behaviour
None of these is a rule you can break and be arrested for. They are the reasons things happen the way they do, and knowing them turns a puzzling interaction into a legible one.
- The wai
- Palms together, a slight bow of the head. It is a greeting, a thank you and an apology, and its height and depth carry meaning: higher hands and a lower head show more respect. A visitor is not expected to get this right and returning one is polite. Do not wai a child or a member of staff who wais you first at a hotel; a nod and a smile is the correct answer there.
- Kreng jai
- The reluctance to impose on someone, or to cause them to lose face by disagreeing. It is why a Thai answer to a difficult question is often indirect, and why 'yes' sometimes means 'I have heard you'. Pushing harder makes it worse; asking the question a different way works better.
- Sanuk
- The idea that an activity should have some fun in it, including work. It is not frivolity, it is a criterion. A job with no sanuk in it is understood to be a bad job in a way that translates poorly into English.
- Mai pen rai
- Never mind, it's nothing, let it go. Said constantly, and meant. It is also the reason a complaint delivered with visible anger will get you further from what you want, not closer: raising your voice in public loses you face rather than the other person.
- The head and the feet
- The head is the highest part of a person and the feet the lowest, and that ordering is taken seriously. Do not touch an adult's head, do not point your feet at a person or a Buddha image, and do not step over someone sitting on the floor.
Frequently asked questions
What is the population of Thailand?+
Around 66 million as of 2024. Roughly a third live in the northeast, and Bangkok's metropolitan area holds something over ten million, which makes it many times larger than any other Thai city.
Was Thailand ever colonised?+
No. Siam was the only country in Southeast Asia to keep its independence through the colonial period. It did so by ceding territory at the edges to Britain and France, granting trade concessions and giving up legal jurisdiction over foreigners, so the independence was real but expensive.
What are Thai people like?+
The honest answer is that sixty-six million people are not like anything in particular. What a visitor tends to notice is an unusual level of everyday politeness, a strong dislike of public confrontation, and a directness about enjoying things that reads as warmth. What sits underneath it are ideas like kreng jai and sanuk, which are worth knowing about because they explain behaviour that otherwise reads oddly.
How many regions does Thailand have?+
Four in the way people actually mean it: the centre, the north, the northeast and the south. Administratively there are 77 provinces plus Bangkok, which is governed separately.
More about the country: the language, religion, the flag.