They were a lackadaisical ethnicity and their amusements were definitely petty—the young chasing balls and finding the extent of their physical prowess; carnal youth in sexual peccadilloes; the worker ants who, when not at work, and no longer succumbing to that role that gave some structure to their existence, spending time in evening revelries about owning their own businesses; elderly women engaged in Tai Chi and their husbands in Chinese checkers on park benches; the poor along the canals, clustered in evenings near their neighbors' shacks for beer and cigarette pilfering, sometimes the men comic book swapping and always musing the day's pettiness amusingly; the rich speculating on how to invest and have more, seeking large flat screen televisions and the fastest computers at Panthip Plaza, the most fashionable clothes in the best of malls, and exchanging tips on how to improve their landscapes and gardens; but which of them, in the thickets of men, felt or thought deeply about the world?
— from An Apostate: Nawin of Thais by Steven David Justin Sills