what a load of sanctimonius crap, or maybe just expat superiority feelings coming to the fore.

I suppose the first thing is that Thailand is an undeveloped nation. As such, the lack of education is pretty widespread. Having little or no education does tend to handicap your thought processes, especially being faced with some farang who thinks he speaks perfect Thai. Education should teach you to think and give you some logical thought processes; the lack of education is difficult for most of us to comprehend.

The second thing is that the culture is very different to that you are probably used to. For instance, saying hello and goodbye are not essential in Thailand, unlike many western countries, where the lack of one or the other would be seen as rude.

Put those two things together (plus maybe a couple of others) then maybe we could realise that life is not so clear as we think