Great post! I’ve been in Thailand a few times now and ‘culture shock’ is the word indeed! I find it’s essential to be honest about that I’m quite ignorant about their culture and ask their help if I make social errors. Fortunately this works OK. Thais, I find, are quite happy if I approach them in this way. I still make lots of errors, but they are quite forgiving .

Cheers,
Fred

A good example of this kind of miss communication was when I was 3, my first encounter with my cousin, Scots, also aged 3:

During my upbringing in the Netherlands I learned that all adults, such as my parents and minders at the crèche, spoke English. And all children spoke Dutch! It’s obvious having learned this I started speaking Dutch to my cousin, who naturally didn’t understand a word of what I was saying.

A good series of books on this is a series call “Culture Shock “, I found it helped me when I visited Laos and when I worked in India. I’m currently reading Culture Shock Iran, for my next adventure.