In honor of celebrating the season of giving in America, our Sticky Rice staff article this month is themed around gifts! We wrote about gifts we’ve given and that we’ve received — either from friends and family before we started our service, or since we’ve been serving here in Thailand.
A shared observation from the writers is that in Thailand every season seems to be a good one for gift-giving and no matter large or small, the gesture is always what counts.
Cloé Fortier-King, 134 YinD
I’m incredibly sentimental. I’ve long favored small thoughtful gifts over anything found in a store. For any event—birthdays, Christmas, thank yous—I jump at the opportunity to pull out my watercolors, pretty pens, and hoarded paper scraps and ribbons. I don’t claim to be particularly talented at any medium, but I love the process of making something out of nothing—the ability to embed significance into something ordinary. It follows then, that I really enjoy making art for the important people in my life here in Thailand, such as this painting for Pi Ohh, the owner of PangPang, a small coffee shop myself and other volunteers practically lived at during PST.
Of course, it’s not enough. There are numerous occasions in both American and Thai culture that require a different kind of gift altogether. And there are so many people I wish I could gift the entire world to, but these are the same people who ask for nothing in return for their kindness. So, in tandem with other little ways to show my love and appreciation, I think something made with intentional time and care is a lovely gesture, one I intend to continue throughout my service.
It makes sense, too, that my favorite gifts to receive are similarly small and sentimental. My students have perfected this, with the notes, drawings, candies, keychains, and stickers they have gifted me ranking as some of my most prized possessions. My backpack, laptop, and home are decorated with little pieces of them. I’m so lucky that I get to carry echoes of their sweet voices, wide smiles, and hopeful futures with me everywhere I go.
Kayla Kawalec, 134 YinD
Like with many things in my life, gift-giving simultaneously brings me both immense joy and high stress. From the first time I came to Thailand and witnessed the concept of naam jai in practice, I connected with it. Whenever I go away from my site for meetings or vacation, my mind is inevitably consumed by “the list” – aka, the ever-growing list of people that I want to gift.
Between the 10 offices in my Tessaban (local government office) and the seven schools that I go to, I’ve, admittedly, gone a bit overboard trying to buy something for every person on “the list” in the past. Gentle reminders from friends have helped remind me that I don’t have to come back from every trip with an extra suitcase of gifts. Once I take the pressure off, finding something to bring back for a friend, coworker, host parent, or student can be a simple joy.
I found that joy with a gift I got for the occasion of my own house-warming party. At the Wua Lai walking street in Chiang Mai, I happened across a woman making pottery and fell in love with her funky designs. I bought a set of cups, one for myself and one for each of my Tessaban friends who made my first three months at site feel like a home. The idea is that whenever they’re at my house, they have their own cup to use, and when I leave at the end of service, it’s theirs to keep and remember our time together.
Aside from the intangible gifts, including time, patience, kindness, and rides to places I need to go – I’ve also been gifted innumerable physical items here. For example, I was fortunate enough to be the recipient of one of Cloé’s handmade treasures (a small, pearlescent bill holder that’s almost too beautiful to use). A Tessaban friend hand-delivered a bag of 7-11 pantry items when I first moved into my own house so that I wouldn’t starve my first night away from my host family. And I’m eagerly awaiting my Christmas gift: a hand-knit scarf from Morgan who taught herself to knit during our first term break at site and has been industriously cranking out wonders ever since.
Before I left for service, my friend Tori gave me a tiny journal that I use daily and reminds me of her. A former sorority advisor and RPCV sends me thoughtful care packages with all kinds of useful things that she gathers with me in mind. My mom hid tiny notes tucked into unexpected places in my belongings that I’m still finding.
All of this only scratches the surface. I am fortunate beyond measure. What all of my favorite gifts have in common is that they’re not only useful to me, but they reflect the hearts of the people that gave them to me. And that is what makes them the most special.
Bradford Reszel and Cadi Duncan, 134 TESS
Gift Given by Us:
Giving (and receiving) food is often the gift of choice for us here in Thailand! It’s appreciated and entrenched in cultural meaning no matter the quantity or quality (a candy bar to a full meal can mean just as much depending on the person or situation). Other than that, we gave our PST host family framed pictures of all of us together with a note thanking them for taking us in and welcoming us to Thailand.
Gifts Received:
Our family and friends gave us the gift of support throughout the whole application and waiting process during the pandemic. Frustration, disappointment, and eventual jubilation were all felt not only by us, but everyone who knew how much we wanted to be Peace Corps Volunteers.
In Thailand, so much care has been given to us by so many. Highlights include celebratory meals for our first wedding anniversary and bringing a full turkey to our home for Thanksgiving dinner!
For pics of our Thanksgiving dinner check out our Instagram:
Teresa Derr, 134 YinD
When I first arrived in Thailand, I brought an assortment of small trinkets (coins, lotion, a necklace, stickers) to give to my host families, as a way to thank them from welcoming me into their home. While I got the feeling they were appreciated because they were “novelties” from America, they were also mostly shrugged at, set upon a shelf, and left unused. The thing that got the best use (in my opinion) was the stickers I brought that got stuck to the doors in my host family’s house, which makes me smile every time I see them.
Nowadays, following the example of all my counterparts, host family members, and friends, whenever I leave site, I bring some kanom (snacks) back. Giving kanoms as a way of saying “Hey, I went somewhere and thought of you,” is a much more common way of giving here.
This way of giving feels rather easy and is also fun to receive! When my German friends visited they brought me German Christmas Cookies, which was the perfect gift for me at this season, and fit in with the Thai culture of feeding each other. I absolutely loved the taste of Christmas the cookies gave me.
It certainly was much more appreciated than the gift of hair products someone gave me. I smiled, thanked them, and stuck it on my shelf, unopened, unused. It helped me understand my host family a little bit better, though!
Morgan Shupsky, 134 YinD
My entire life I’ve considered gift giving to be one of the things I was best at. That is, until I got to Thailand and realized my gift giving abilities paled in comparison to every single Thai person I’ve ever met. The culture of gift-giving is so pervasive here that I feel like I need to be on alert at all times for someone trying to gift me with something. Whether it be earrings they saw over the weekend that made them think of me, ice cream after school, or kanoms from their most recent trip, it’s safe to say that every person in Thailand shares the love language of gift-giving. This makes me very insecure because, just like everything else, there are cultural differences in love languages (surprise, surprise)!
The best approach I have to remedy this is trying. It doesn’t matter what you buy or how much it costs. The effort in showing that you thought about someone else and got something to give to them is more than enough. Every time I leave site, I buy an assortment of kanoms and give them out throughout the next week to whomever I encounter; I tell them about where I went, which usually includes a picture show, and give a description of everything I ate.
I’ve also started knitting since coming to site, and in the spirit of the cold season finally coming to Thailand, I knit my host brother a hat. You would’ve thought this hat was knit out of solid gold the way my host mom reacted to me gifting it to him. It’s safe to say that he will never wear the hat because it’s being treated as such a treasured gift (and because the cold season is already over). But again, it’s all about the effort.
Bianca Palese, 134 TESS
Bianca recently wrote an article on this topic for Sticky Rice with her suggestions for gift-giving in Thailand. You can read it here!
Dito Montaña, 134 YinD
Truthfully I’ve always considered myself to be a bad gift-giver. I think it’s a lovely way to show appreciation for those you care about, but the act of picking out a gift that meets expectations for whatever the occasion/gift-giving reason is without it being “too much” stresses me out. I tend to overthink things, but gift-giving shouldn’t be something worth overthinking. So nowadays whenever I go on a trip out of site I’ll try to keep it simple and bring my host family some kind of fruit or kanom unique to that place. I think they appreciate it – plus it’s the thought that counts, and keeping it simple sometimes really is best.
On the opposite end of the souvenir spectrum, my family loves sending me packages. They will often ship me a random assortment of eclectic decorations for my home or the hard-to-find Brazilian snacks that I crave. In these care packages, my favorite gifts are the ones that remind me of home. The dish towel with my town and zip code printed on it, or Polaroids of my family and my dog. The physical gift is sweet, but the reassurance that home is truly never that far away is the real present.
Sticky Rice 