Water Runs Through the Thai Culture

Water runs through the Thai cultural fabric like a silver thread. Villages and towns were traditionally build on the banks of rivers and canals, and wet rice cultivation provided the people's staple.

In Buddhism, water, both sustaining and transparent, are symbols of the spiritual support and purity of the Buddha's teachings, and lustral water is widely featured in religious blessings and rites of passage.

Water is also literally life sustaining, and the water jar, Maw Nam, has for centuries been an icon of daily life. The term 'Maw Naw' is generic, but the water jar most typical of Thai rural life, as well as being indicative of the innate hospitality of the Thais, is a wide-belied clay pot with a lid.

Traditionally, these were placed on a stand outside village homes so that travelers passing by could refresh themselves with a drink of clear, cool water. We can see now-a-days a fork of this custom at some roadside food places, were people passing by scope water out with a plastic or stainless steel cup out of a water cooler and move on without having ordered anything from that place. In the old days homeowners would ensure the pots were always freshly filed and a wooden drinking ladle provided, while the porous clay of the pots kept the water cool.

Although the custom of providing water jars has largely died out in the wake of modern development, it is still practiced in some rural areas and the Maw Nam, either in practical use or as a decorative item, continues to symbolize the quintessential role of water in Thai life and customs.

We hereby also want to wish everybody a nice, lovely and romantic Loy Kratong celebration, Loy Kratong is a festival celebrated annually throughout Thailand. Loy means 'to float'. 'Krathong' is a raft about a handspan in diameter traditionally made from a section of banana tree trunk, decorated with elaborately-folded banana leaves, flowers, candles, incense sticks etc. Apart from venerating the Buddha with light, the act of floating away the candle raft is symbolic of letting go of all one's grudges, anger and defilements, so that one can start life afresh on a better foot.