Day colours, luck and the spirit house

Thai astrology, inherited from Hindu planetary lore, assigns each day of the week a colour: Sunday red, Monday yellow, Tuesday pink, Wednesday green, Thursday orange, Friday blue, Saturday purple. Every Thai knows which weekday they were born on, and therefore their own สีประจำวันเกิด (sǐi bprà-jam wan gòet), the colour of their birth day. This is a standard fact about yourself here, like your blood type on a Japanese form. Check your own birth date's weekday this week, because "I don't know" sounds as strange to a Thai ear as not knowing your own birthday. The system matters most because of the royal family. Both the late King Rama IX and the current King were born on a Monday, so yellow is the royal colour. Around the King's birthday on 28 July, and on other royal anniversaries, offices, schools and whole streets turn yellow. The late Queen Sirikit, the Queen Mother, was born on a Friday, so 12 August, which doubles as Mother's Day, runs light blue. The third date to know is 5 December, the late King Rama IX's birthday, which remains National Day and Father's Day; it runs yellow too, and government offices, schools and malls mark it visibly. Nobody expects a foreigner to join in, but a plain yellow polo at work on 28 July is noticed and quietly appreciated. The rule that actually has teeth is the negative one: do not wear black or dark mourning tones to anything connected with a royal celebration, because black is funeral wear. There is also an unlucky colour for each day, the กาลกิณี (gaa-lá-gì-nii) colour, which some older people and taxi drivers still mind when choosing clothes or car colours. Be honest with yourself about the spread here: most Bangkokians under forty could not name Wednesday's colour without thinking, and the day colours only surface for royal occasions. In the provinces, government and school staff wear the month's royal colour far more consistently, and your neighbours are more likely to know, and mention, that you were born on a Tuesday. Now the spirit house. Nearly every plot of land in Thailand, including glass condo towers in Bangkok, has a ศาลพระภูมิ (sǎan phrá phuum) on a pillar near the entrance. The logic explains the etiquette. Strictly there are two shrines, and many properties have both. The ศาลพระภูมิ (sǎan phrá phuum), up on a single pillar, houses Phra Phum, a guardian deity invited in to protect the land. The lower shrine on four legs, the ศาลเจ้าที่ (sǎan jâo thîi), belongs to the spirit that already owned the ground before your building displaced it. Everyday speech blurs the two, and everything below applies to both: you give the spirits a home nicer than your own, feed them daily, and in return they leave the household in peace and keep wandering ผี (phǐi), spirits, away. The morning offerings are garlands, พวงมาลัย (phuuang maa-lai), rice, fruit, incense sticks called ธูป (thûup), and the famous open bottle of น้ำแดง (náam daeng), red Fanta with a straw. Why red soda? Red has stood in for the blood offerings of older practice, and sweetness is thought to please spirits. The straw is simple hospitality. What you should do about spirit houses is mostly nothing. Walk past normally. Do not touch the figures, do not rearrange or take offerings, do not pose draped over one for photos, and do not let children climb it. If the house you rent has one, the owner or housekeeper almost always tends it; if nobody does, leave it alone anyway. Never remove or relocate one yourself, even a shabby one, because retiring a spirit house requires a proper ceremony. That is why you see clusters of abandoned ones stacked under big banyan trees. If you want to start well with neighbours, a small wai, ไหว้ (wâi), toward the shrine when you first move in costs you nothing and is read as good manners, not as religious conversion. Twice a day the country pauses for the national anthem, เพลงชาติ (phleeng châat). The flag goes up at 08:00 and comes down at 18:00, and the anthem plays in parks, BTS and MRT stations, schools, government offices, and over village loudspeakers upcountry. The custom is to stop walking and stand still, silent, for the minute it lasts. Honestly: on a central Bangkok pavement plenty of people now keep moving and nobody says anything. Inside a park, a station, a school or any government building, everyone stops, and you should too. Standing still for sixty seconds is free; being the one moving figure in a frozen park is a genuinely bad look, and at immigration or any official counter it would be worse than that. The cinema has its own version. Before every screening, after the trailers, a title card asks the audience to rise and the royal anthem, เพลงสรรเสริญพระบารมี (phleeng sǎn-sǒen phrá baa-rá-mii), plays over images of the King. Stand up, take your hat off, put your phone down, and stay quiet until it finishes. This is the one custom in this lesson with legal weight behind it, because the lese-majeste law is broad and actively enforced. Prosecutions of seated foreigners are rare; glares, filming, and a viral clip of you are not. Whatever your private views, the cinema is not the venue, this week or any week. Numbers next, because they decide real prices. Nine, เก้า (gâo), is the big lucky number since it sounds like ก้าว (gâao), to step forward, hence progress. People pay heavily for it: SIM cards and licence plates thick with nines are auctioned, and a ทะเบียนสวย (thá-biian sǔuay), a pretty plate, can cost more than the car. Many buildings quietly skip floor 13, and among Thai-Chinese families 4 is avoided because it sounds like death in Chinese. You can use all this in the other direction: an "ugly" phone number or house number is cheaper, and you are allowed not to care. The lottery, หวย (hǔuay), draws on the 1st and 16th of every month, and the hunt for เลขเด็ด (lêek dèt), the hot number, is a national sport. Numbers come from dreams decoded with dream books, from revered monks, from licence plates in newsworthy accidents, and from trees or termite mounds with strange growths, where people rub talcum powder on the bark until digits appear. In the days before a draw, ticket vendors with their wooden briefcase boards multiply around big temples, which is why the temple forecourt suddenly feels like a trading floor. Expect to be asked for numbers: your birthday, your house number, the day you arrived in Thailand. Answer cheerfully. If your number hits, you will have friends for life; either way, do not lecture anyone about probability. How seriously should you take all of it? Unevenly, like the Thais around you. Your accountant may consult a monk about her plate number and also hold an MBA; your young colleague may roll his eyes at every bit of it except standing in the cinema. The workable posture for a foreigner is simple: join in lightly when invited, never mock, and treat the fixed points, the anthem stops, the cinema anthem, and the spirit house, as etiquette rather than theology. Nobody is asking you to believe anything. They are only asking you not to be the person who kept walking, kept sitting, or moved the spirit house.