Cultural diffrence?
Mar 6th, 2006 by Lillian
Isn’t it interesting how people all have different comfort zones? Swiss people are touchy but only to a certain extent. Couples hold hands, hug and kiss in public. Its quite ok to get a hug from from someone the opposite sex … Its quite something else if you hold your same sex friends hand. In Thailand, its different. Couples often don’t touch in public but its normal to see girls holding their friends hands and boys holding their friends hand….
I am glad that we don’t need to kiss everyone on the check three times when we meet here. In Switzerland it was how I always met my friends. But in hot season its much nicer to just wai. I often wonder if the comfort zone between Thais and Swiss is different. I honestly don’t know. I’ve talked to friends about this and it seem that people from both cultures seem equally ‘touch deprived’. Maybe Swiss and Thai are more similar than you might think….
(does this post make sense? I’m so tired this morning and can’t seem to wake up…..)
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A few years ago when I first came to Thailand and had only been here a month, I had to go and do some work in Chiang Mai and one of the women I was working with took me out shopping and she held my hand the whole time which made me feel so uncomfortable… maybe because hand holding for me is reserved to my boyfriend, if I’m with a kid I need to look after or sometimes my mum and that’s it. So, definite cultural difference there!
Germans are just the same…..touch deprived. *sigh*
I have a friend and we always hold hands when we walk.. another friend we just walk arm in arm… yes.. that takes some getting used. What will my friends in Switzerland say when I want to hold their hand when we are shopping
I noticed it when living in Turkey … the ease with which same sex friends touch each other … I come from New Zealand, where we have largely managed to avoid any touch beyond the handshake on meeting, and nothing much between friends.
So in Turkey I learned to kiss and be kissed on the cheek in greeting, and to have a friend’s arm linked through mine as we walked.
Now Belgium, and the older couples holding hands on the streets stunned me, and their practice of 1 or 2 or 3 kisses on the cheek took some getting used to too.
Europe is the most closed society I’ve lived in so far, the people seem lonely here, somehow isolated from each other. In Turkey, the culture of family is alive and well, although I fear for its future … it’s more difficult to be lonely there, although I’m sure it’s a state sometimes wished for. And New Zealand … we’re an odd mix of the previous two societies in comportment.
Having written all that, we are a ‘type’, an individual … and we will always find someone else like us where ever we go, and yes, I think countries are all more similar than they know … it’s about being human I think.
Lol, forgive me, that was a long piece but I’m working on a theory and your post made me think more on it.
Di.. thanx for your comment. Its true.. we are ‘one of a kind’ and we always find someone like us.
It makes perfect sense … and a good post.