Take Your Pick

In Thailand it's considered impolite to dislodge food particles from one's teeth without hiding the toothpick and the user's teeth. Thais and acclimated foreigners sit in restaurants after a meal with one hand covering the manipulating hand and the diner's teeth while the cleaning is in progress. Unenlightened visitors not only pick at teeth in the open,even with their fingers, but also then keep the pick in their mouth for a time afterward. Thais disapprove, but politely dismiss the cultural taboo as the product of a person lacking in manners or education.

While discreet covering of the mouth is the norm, nose picking and expectorating seem to be national pastimes. It is not at all unusual to see businessmen in suits or grandmothers minding their shops busily mining their nasal passages, or mightily hacking up half their mucous lining to be spat unceremoniously into a flower pot, the street, or if in a hurry, simply ejected onto the sidewalk, where along with dog scat and bird droppings, it becomes part of a bacterial minefield for pedestrians.

How interesting our cultural norms are; accepted in once place while frowned upon in another corner of the world!