Soap Opera’s, or serials if you like,  are a unique American invention of story telling that took the world by storm and no place loves their soaps more than Thailand. Originally serials started on the radio and would be a nightly or weekly productions that lasted anywhere from 15 minutes to an hour.

After the advent of television they really found a home. By the 1950′s every American television station had one or more being broadcast everyday to those lonely housewives who, incidentally, were in charge of the household expenses. Marketers seeing money signs saw a very susceptible audience in those housewives and television ads really took off.

The nickname “soap opera” comes from the fact that the first real advertisers to the television serial were soap manufacturers and the fact that they were clean wholesome entertainment. I don’t think they ever expected them to be what they are today.

In Thailand they have to be multi billion baht operations because I swear every channel has at least 3 or 4 running daily and well into the night. The old joke has it that the Thai’s have 3 favorite pastimes…eating, sleeping and watching Thai soaps. I can tell you from experience there really is no joke there.

When I’m in Thailand it doesn’t matter what is going on because at the appointed times of 1pm, 2pm and 8pm Pookie’s favorite soaps are on. Alright, that might not be totally true but when there isn’t something important going on she will be in front of the television at those times for sure. She has even gone as far as to make sure if we are going out to lunch to steer me towards a restaurant that has a television and female waitresses…becauce they all watch the same soaps.

When We were in Bangkok this past April I wanted to hit a lot of the sights I hadn’t seen before and since this was a mini vacation for Pookie you can imagine that sight seeing wasn’t on her agenda. I would get funny looks whenever the 1 o’clock hour approached but being resourceful as she is we usually were headed to a restaurant around that time and damned if they didn’t all have televisions!

Going to Wat Arun or the Grand Palace? No problem, there is a restaurant on that pier just as you disembark the water taxi and they have a nice big T.V.  Chinatown, MBK, the floating market? Doesn’t matter where you go there is a T.V. and you can bet at the appointed hour there will be Thai women around it watching the soaps. My favorite was out in the rice fields in Nakhon Phanom there are little huts or covered platforms to take a break in from the hot sun. I noticed that one of these tiny platforms had electricity fed to it and when I asked my girl she said it was for many things. Her brother laughed and told me it was so the women wouldn’t miss their soaps while working in the fields.

If you are a Falang in a relationship with a Thai woman then this isn’t news to you, you’ve seen all the same ones I have. It isn’t so bad though, they can actually help with learning Thai.  I’ve found that even the parts where I’m not sure what they are saying I can still figure out what is going on. And I get that quality time with my lady…as long as I don’t make fun of whats going on and I’m relatively quiet. You can bet I get dirty looks throughout the hour especially when an actress is crying, which is every 3.2 minutes on the dot.

And nothing has changed much from the marketers standpoint, they still know their audience and instead of soap they sell whitening cream and shampoo. Trust me the marketing works and as far as my girl is concerned she would be coal black if it weren’t for whitening cream.

I have to admit though I have become kinda hooked on the one Thai soap that is pictured throughout this post although I’m not sure why. I’m sure Pavlov’s dog never knew why he was hungry every time he heard a bell either.

Extra points if you can name the soap pictured…