The main Thai culture dos and don'ts: return a wai (the palms-together greeting), take your shoes off in homes and temples, dress modestly at temples, never touch a head or point your feet, keep kissing private, keep your voice down, and never joke about the monarchy. Many everyday ones follow one test: don't lower anyone in front of others.
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We read what 184 people wrote on Pantip, the big Thai web forum, and in one English thread of tips for visitors: 200 answers in 10 threads, 2010 to 2026 (a few people answered in more than one thread). In one 2026 thread, asked whether they would order a dish dearer than their host’s when the host says to order anything, 76 of 95 said they would not. They rarely called any of it “face”. Across every post in the nine Thai threads, coded or not, the Thai word for losing face came up for 5 of 270 people, against 31 for kreng jai, a word for not wanting to put others out, and 47 for manners or the right time and place (our count, October 2026).
Once you see what the rules protect, you can work out the moments a list forgets: the waiter who got your order wrong, the uncle who got a fact wrong, the bill at a table of her friends. Here is the list first, then the reason, then those moments one at a time.
Thai culture dos and don’ts at a glance: what is disrespectful
What is considered disrespectful in Thailand, by the Thai government’s own tips for visitors, is mostly about the body, sacred places, greetings and the royal family. These are the cultural taboos in Thailand from that list; shoes off in a home comes from the visitors’ tips and the Thai threads we read:
| Do | Don’t |
|---|---|
| Return a wai when someone greets you with one | Touch anyone’s head or ruffle their hair |
| Take your shoes off before a home or a temple’s hall of worship | Put your feet on a table, or point at or touch anyone with your foot |
| Dress properly at a temple: no shorts, no miniskirts | Show intimacy with your partner in public |
| Treat Buddha images as sacred | Touch a monk or hand him something directly, if you are a woman |
| Show respect when the royal family comes up | Say anything disrespectful about the King, the Queen or the Royal Family |
The list comes from the tips page the Royal Thai Embassy in Cairo publishes for visitors, last updated in October 2024. The same page warns that disrespect towards Buddha images can be punished with prison, for foreign visitors too. 1
One more rule runs through the Thai threads we read even though the embassy page doesn’t spell it out: keep your voice down. Two of the nine Thai threads are about it, one on being told off loudly and one on foreigners being loud in public. A list covers the usual cases; for the rest, it helps to know what the rules protect.
Why the rules exist: face, kreng jai and the right time and place
Many everyday Thai dos and don’ts protect a person’s standing in front of others and give older or more senior people their due. The head is the highest part of the body and the feet the lowest, so touching a head or pointing a foot can lower someone. A raised voice or a public correction does the same thing with words. The rules about temples, Buddha images and the monarchy also rest on religion and the law, and they still apply when nobody is watching.
Thai has everyday words for this. เสียหน้า (sia na) means to lose face, and the dictionary’s own example is a child whose bad behaviour makes the parents lose face too. 2 เกรงใจ (kreng jai) means not wanting to make others feel troubled, put out or annoyed. 3 Face is about embarrassment and lost standing; kreng jai is about holding back so you don’t trouble, inconvenience or annoy someone.
In the threads we read, people writing in Thai reached for kreng jai and manners far more than face. In the nine Pantip threads, 270 people posted, and we counted the words in every post, not only the ones we coded:
- 47 used the words for manners or the right time and place
- 31 used kreng jai
- 5 used the words for losing face, and 4 of those 5 were in the one thread whose question was about losing face
- 5 used the word for shame or embarrassment
So “saving face” is one fair name for what many of these rules protect, but in these threads it was rarely the word people chose. They offered more than one way to see these moments: losing face, not putting others out, and choosing the right time and place. A Thai friend may well say you weren’t kreng jai, or that it wasn’t the time or place.