I have a bit of a dilemma: a young Thai student I’ve been mentoring is about to graduate, and he wants to follow up with a six month stay in Australia to improve his English skills.

I’m all in favor of this, since Thailand’s biggest challenge in the new world order is the people’s extremely poor grasp of basic English. The dilemma involves whether or not to try and suggest to my young friend that he may want to alter his behavior a bit, to better fit in with western society.

You see, like most young Thais - like most young people everywhere - my friend is extremely self absorbed, and practically obsessed with his looks. Among the many contradictions of Thai culture is that they can be amazingly accepting of people that don’t conform to western ideals of beauty (I’m adequate proof of that), while at the same time being amazingly vain about their own appearance.

I’ve been around my friend enough to observe that he cannot pass a mirror, or even a darkened window, without checking his hair or his face. He is not at all unique in this trait. Keep your eye on a mirror in any public place in Bangkok, and you’ll notice a fair percentage of the people under the age of 30 who pass by will check themselves out, and it’s mostly guys who do this. That may be just because women have mirrors in their purses to do this more discretely.

I’ve been in Thailand since the early 90’s, so I pretty much missed the whole metrosexual thing, but I’m still relatively sure that vanity is still considered a bad thing in western society. Last I heard, it was still one of the seven deadly sins for Catholics.

Part of the dilemma is exactly how to explain this particular concept. There are certain things about western culture that Thais just don’t get, and one of them is the issue of vanity. Thais are often amazed when I show up at a tourist site with a camera, and politely refuse to have them take my picture. To them it often seems as the whole point of visiting any place is to have their picture taken. The old stereotype of Asians and cameras is, I’m afraid, largely true. So, I’m just not sure my friend will understand the concept that people may not look favorably on his spending so much time in front of the mirror.