the wai-by

All right, class, we've all read Shogun and we know that in Japan people bow to each other. Low, obsequious bows; tiny, imperious bows; and, if James Clavell is to be believed, doing it correctly is a very big deal. (I'm reading another of his books now, Gai-Jin, and I think it will be the last. He's just not that good a writer.)

In Thailand there is a very particular kind of bow-like greeting called the wai. It's ubiquitous--used between friends, from student to teacher, and in almost every other social situation.

How to wai:

• Place your palms together, fingers pointing up.
• Smile.
• Nod your head.

If you're wai-ing someone with higher status than you (your teacher, for example, or anyone older than you), your hands should be placed quite high, with your fingers near your nose. You should not only nod your head, but bow.

If you're wai-ing someone with equal status (like a friend), your hands are placed lower and the bow becomes a head-nod with a slight, rocking inclination of the shoulders.

If you're wai-ing someone with lower status than you (like a student), you may dispense with the hands altogether or place them quite low. You must wait for the lower-status person to wai first, and then you return the wai. You should incline your head very slightly.

This gesture is used with greetings, in place of "thank you," and with farewells. (And probably a lot of other times too.) It's the greetings and farewells that have led Husband to coin a new term: the wai-by. So far he's used it in two contexts.

The first type of wai-by is what happens in the lunch area at the university when one student arrives at, gets up from, or walks by a table that's already filled with his or her friends. Whether sitting down, leaving, or just walking by, the student in motion must exchange wais individually with each seated friend. This would be time-consuming, except that the students are so practiced at it. A student can do 15 or 20 wais, each directed at an individual and returned by that individual, in the space of less than 10 seconds. It's especially impressive when the student is neither arriving nor leaving, but only walking by, in which case this entire maneuver is carried out without stopping.

The second type of wai-by happened to us just yesterday. We were standing outside chatting with some other farang teachers, when a car packed with students drove by and noticed us. Immediately all of the students (INCLUDING THE DRIVER!!!) turned to us, grinned, and wai-ed. Without stopping the car.