Pick up almost any of the books designed to help expats adapt to Thai culture, and you’ll almost certainly find a chapter on “promises.” The gist of these, without the glossing, is that promises aren’t taken as seriously by Thais as they are by most foreigners. It’s a cultural thing, and anyone who lives here for a long time either learns to accept it, or goes postal one day.

The problem arises for those of us (trying) to do business in Thailand. The same ‘loose’ interpretation of a promise is often also applied to contracts. Thai organizations - from small companies up to and including government agencies - will think it right and normal to sign a contract, and then fail to honor the terms should they prove ‘inconvenient’ in any way.

Excuses I’ve heard vary from a simple bureaucratic reasoning such as “The terms are not according to our policy.” To more elaborate excuses that mostly boil down to “It seemed like a good idea at the time, but we’ve changed our minds.” The problems almost always involve payments or delivery schedules.

Why am I whining about this, other than the chance to blow off some steam? Well, Thailand is desperate to be “one of the big boys” on the world stage, but they are extremely stuborn about conforming to the internationally accepted rules of behavior. There’s often a feeling that everyone else should follow the Thai example, rather than requiring Thais to change their own ways. There’s a relatively common belief among Thais that things which work elsewhere won’t work in Thailand, hence a common excuse of simply saying “This is Thailand” to explain everything from the lack of traffic sense up to the failure to honor contracts.

The problem is that it’s very likely that Thais’ attitudes will result in them becoming increasingly isolated from the rest of the world rather than a bigger part of it. I already know of some companies that won’t deal with Thai organizations, simply because of the difficulty of getting things done or getting paid.