Listen. Thailand isn’t just a country. It’s a giant, glittering status game where everyone is silently ranking you from the second you step outside. You think the wai (that graceful little bow-prayer thing) is about respect? Wrong. It’s a calibrated laser scanner for your social credit score. Bow too low and you’re announcing “I am a peasant, please step on me.” Bow too little and you’re the arrogant farang who doesn’t know his place. The depth of your wai is basically your LinkedIn profile picture, except everyone can see it in real time.

At the top we have High So — the glittering gods of Thai society. These people don’t just own nice things. They weaponize them. The Louis Vuitton bag isn’t a bag, it’s a billboard screaming “I have arrived.” The Mercedes isn’t transportation, it’s a throne on wheels. Their outfits are so coordinated they look like they woke up inside a Vogue photoshoot. Even their sweat probably smells like Tom Ford. You see them strutting through Siam Paragon and you just know their ancestors are proud. Their wai is a gentle 15-degree tilt because why would they bend further for mere mortals?

Then there’s Low So (or as we lovingly call it in my house: Losso). This is me after any physical activity. I come back from the beach or the gym looking like I lost a fight with a sandstorm and a washing machine. Sand in my hair, sweat stains in places sweat should never be, shirt half-tucked like I gave up halfway. My family takes one look at me tracking dirt across the marble floor and goes, “Ayy, Low So lae!” with that perfect mix of affection and brutal honesty. I’m basically one step above a water buffalo that wandered in from the rice paddy.

And because Thai people are creative geniuses who refuse to live in binary, we invented the holy middle ground: Soso.

Soso is the promised land. Not flashy enough to be High So (because that would be exhausting and suspiciously try-hard), but not disgusting enough to be Losso. Soso is “I showered today and put on a clean polo, please acknowledge my moderate life success.” It’s the Switzerland of social class. Calm. Neutral. Respectable.

Every time I manage to leave the house in something that doesn’t look like it was retrieved from the laundry basket after a tsunami, I point at myself like a game show host, asking for praise. Maybe I can be his today. Its’s a dream, “You see?! His!! Look at this shirt— buttons. Buttons! I hiii soooo!”

My family just laughs and says, “Hiso? You think you his! Maybe today So-So.” Devastating.

This is what Thai society does to you. We turned basic human grooming into a spiritual quest. I’m out here chasing status like it’s enlightenment. Nirvana is not a state of mind — it’s when your wife sees you in ironed pants and doesn’t immediately call you a field worker.

So yes, I dream of the day I walk in perfectly balanced — clean, but not suspiciously rich; presentable, but not performative. The golden Soso mean. Until then I’ll keep pointing at my decent outfits like a madman yelling “NOT LOSSO. soso!” while my relatives film me for the family Line group chat.

Thailand, I love you, but your status game is twice as likely to leave me emotionally bruised than a Muay Thai fight at my gym.

But I love you nonetheless, and I pray that you guys out there think of me as so-so.