Dress to impress

Every now and then I've tried to explain it to people outside of Thailand: the dress code. Huh? You guys have a dress code? Yes. Gotta wear a tie? Sometimes and we wear yellow on Monday. Huh? We wear yellow on Monday. Why? For the king. The king came to your school? No.... I'll try to explain the elaborate ever changing rules one last time.

My school is probably one of the more traditional government schools in Thailand. So we have a stricter dresscode. But just like everywhere in Thailand (also in shops and offices) we wear yellow on Monday in honor of the king. A yellow polo shirt that is. With a specific crest.

It all started with the old crest in honor of the king's 60 years on the throne. That was worn on a yellow polo on Monday and Tuesday and by some the entire week. Then came the new crest for the king's 80th birthday. But you can still wear the old logo. Although on Monday it is preferred if you wear the new one. All this is still on a yellow shirt. You still with me?



Of course you can not not honor the queen. So that's why we wore blue for her on Wednesday. With or without a crest. On Thursday we do not honor the rainbow or something. It just means that we can wear any color (with a tie, don't forget the tie in a matching color). The Thai teachers (and students) wear their boy scout and girl scout uniforms that day. (Yes: we dogged a bullit).

Friday we wear yellow again. Not for the king. For the province. On Friday everbody in Thailand wears a design or color from their area. In Phuket Friday is batik shirt day and in Khon Kaen you are actually supposed to wear a yellow dinosaur shirt. But plain yellow's good too. Even a yellow polo with the old 60 year crest. Got that?

Unfortunately there's more. Since the death of Vadhana (in December 2007) we all had to wear black and white. Initially for a couple of weeks but it got extended to 100 days and as you can see we can still 'choose' to wear black and white every Tuesday and Wednesday. To complicate matters it seems that any dark color is okay too and on Wednesday I've already seen some dare devils go back to blue.

I can not begin to explain how important this dress code thing is to (most of ) the Thai. Outside the schools the king's shirts are still worn by all. And you should see what happens on special holidays where Thai style dress is the norm (yes: I do have an Isaan style jacket, no: I have no pictures....yet).

And then there's the pink shirt... Pay attention, it's been right there in the graph all along! The pink shirt is actually more a fad that got started when the king had to go to hospital (end of 2007). It looked touch and go for a while but he came out in good health and spirits and wore a pink jacket. Thai people have since then started to wear pink shirts with crests to keep wishing the king good health. Of course you couldn't do that on Monday (are you nuts?). But on Tuesday it's cool. That's to say it used to be cool because we still have to wear black for now.

We foreign teachers have so far tried to make Thursday into swimsuit-, polka dot-, neon-, birthday suit- floppy shoe and monkey tie day. Neither of those stuck. I'm open to suggestions :)