All countries have something of their own, something the dictionary calls "a kind or sort, especially in regard to appearance or form." We recognize it. It shows us where we are just as certainly as does the airport or the railway station. Robert Louis Stevenson came closest to defining it when he wrote: "A web then, or a pattern; a web at once sensuous and logical, an elegant and pregnant texture: that is style."
Style, a way of doing things, defines, identifies. Among the various national styles of Asia -- each one individual no matter what facets are borrowed from a neighbor -- that of Thailand shines as one of the most apparent.
As Alex Kerr has written in his preface to this investigation into the style of Thailand's popular culture, the country "seems an informal, free-wheeling place, even at times chaotic. But the more time you spend here you realize that there's an internal logic and symbolism invisibly ordering everything."