If you’ve been to Thailand for any amount of time you’ve seen countless instances of Thai ingenuity, some barely noticeable and some quite blatant. Most are simple fixes that you wouldn’t have thought of and some clever enough that you wish you would have thought of.

The one thing all cases of Thai ingenuity have in common is money. I mean, why buy a mouse trap when you can build a better one, or at least one that will fit the bill without costing you a satang. For some reason on my last trip I noticed the Thai ingenuity everywhere I went from Bangkok to Nakhon Phanom and decided to document some of it.

The first one I will present to you today I came across while waiting for the riverboat taxi at the central pier in Bangkok. They have a information desk there that is sometimes unmanned for various reasons. Now, in a western country this problem is easily fixed by installing a small bell for the customers to ring when they need service and no one is around. Bells cost money and why buy a bell when you have soda cans and string?

Our next submission also comes in from the central pier riverboat taxi stand. It seems the downspout for the roof had disappeared at one corner or there was a hole in the gutter and the water was coming down directly on customers. Now, you could go buy a length of downspout or PVC to fix the problem but that would incur expense. Why spend money when someone has already bought and discarded a completely useful plastic bottle or two. And if you haven’t already noticed they killed two birds with one stone on this one…they placed a potted plant beneath the makeshift downspout so they wouldn’t have to waste time watering it.

Speaking of rain…If you know it’s going to rain it’s nice to have an umbrella with you so you don’t get wet. Unfortunately on this day there was no sign of rain in sight and I got caught at the exchange booths at CareFour in Pattaya. While waiting out the rain I was wishing I had an umbrella because this downpour lasted a good hour. Now, a normal umbrella wouldn’t have helped that much as the rain was coming down in buckets. If I had just had the Thai ingenuity factor going for me I would have been prepared and very dry. Big rains call for big umbrella’s.

My last submission for the day confused me for a good 10 minutes as I stood and stared at it. It wasn’t until the shop owner next door came out and explained it to me that I truly understood the genius of this one. At first I thought it was yet another downspout fix…admittedly one that would require attention every few minutes. When I was told what it was for I had to laugh. I’m going to leave this one for you guys to figure out and if you don’t (high probability) I might just let you in on the secret. Unfortunately it didn’t save the business it served but I bet it helped out a great deal on rainy days.

And the answer is: The store this funnel was in front of used to be a store that sold aquarium fish and tadpoles for eating. They saved money when it rained by hanging plasic bags under the funnel to fill up with rain water and they would then place the fish or tadpoles in the bags when they were sold. I guess it didn’t rain enough for them to save money as they went out of business.