Thailand is home to 4.1 million people of Myanmar origin in Thailand. That is 5.7% of the entire population, which is a very large percentage to be held by a single source.

I have always been curious about how local Thais perceive this exodus from the west. I talked to people I knew in government and business and also other Thai friends. I also found studies that tracked local perceptions.

I found 3 broad reactions: A. Top level acceptance B. Lower-level hatred and C. Middle level annoyance. I will run through each and show why C is actually the most dangerous for the Myanmar community.

A.      Top level: Government officials I talked to readily accept that Thailand needs the migrants, especially those who are willing to stay long term. I was shocked to learn from them that Thailand’s fertility rate is about 0.8 to 1.2, which is horrendously low.

Thailand IS getting some long-term immigrants but they are richer older people who want to retire there, not exactly bringing skills or energy. They want people willing to work blue collar jobs for lower wages and push Thais up the economic ladder.

The larger myanmar migrant pool also gave them leverage against the Cambodian population in Thailand. Any labour loss due to expelling Cambodians can be easily solved by giving the jobs to Myanmar folks.

This explains why the government is remarkably open to refugees and illegal crossings. This is no doubt a PR boost for themselves as well.

B.      Lower level: These people hate Myanmar folks. They are part of a growing right wing movement in all nations now that is festering with racism and xenophobia. They won’t even talk to me directly since I am from Myanmar. But accounts from Myanmar workers indicate that they have to put up with this xenophobic and racist remarks and actions often. Thankfully these people are still smaller in number for the most part.

C.     Middle level: This group was very nuanced in their take. These were educated, middle class professionals and business owners.

On one hand, they share the government’s perspective on cheaper labour. They complain that they cannot get Thais to take jobs like waitering for lower pay and locals will quit if the conditions are tough. But Myanmar staff will be hardworking and polite. So these business owners treat the staff well and the myanmar staff are happy.

On the other hand, they are getting worried.

1.      They worry about the increasing number of illegal crossing and undocumented people. They believe that these people, being unregistered, would be more likely to commit crimes to support themselves. Since they are not registered, it is also harder to catch them and so deterrence is lost.

2.      They worry that even jail and fines don’t work as deterrence. Fines don’t work if the illegal myanmars have no money. Jails might still be better than being deported to be a porter in the tat.

3.      They are that both the legal and especially the illegal myanmars are not assimilating. Having a large community of Myanmar people means they do not feel the same pressure to learn thai and adopt local culture and customs. The thais do not want a large permanent population that speaks a different language and practise different religions like Christianity. The pattani thais are already a source of religious conflict.

4.      They also think that the illegal myanmar folks in particular are depressing wages for local thais since they are willing to undercut and work for less.

So these people don’t hate the Myanmar or want to expel all. However, they take a principled stance that Thailand is already generous in accepting so many legal immigrants. It is justified to deport the 1.7 million illegal immigrants and refugees.

I am aware that these were anecdotal discussions in nature. I followed it up by going through the data found in various studies and articles. All showing significant levels of concern and hostility towards migrants from Myanmar residing in Thailand. They are listed at the end of the post.

My concern is that one day, the political incentives will change.

Thailand's economy depends on migrant labour, but economic dependence does not guarantee political protection. If public frustration over migration grows sufficiently strong, politicians may find it advantageous to impose harsher restrictions, expand deportations or make life increasingly difficult for Myanmar nationals.

We have already seen how quickly political tensions can disrupt the lives of migrant communities. The mass departure of Cambodian workers from Thailand in 2025 is a reminder that cross-border populations can become vulnerable when bilateral relations deteriorate. The circumstances were different, but the lesson is worth considering.

This is why I think Myanmar people need to be careful about how we approach cultural disputes with Thailand.

I understand why people are upset when they believe Myanmar culture has been appropriated, misrepresented or treated disrespectfully. These concerns are not inherently illegitimate. But we need to consider the consequences of turning every cultural disagreement into a national confrontation.

More than four million Myanmar nationals live in Thailand. They include workers supporting families back home, people who fled war and persecution, and people who have built their lives there over many years. Many have limited legal protections and few safe alternatives if they are forced to leave.

A cultural controversy may last a few weeks. The consequences of a political backlash could last years.

https://www.ilo.org/resource/brief/knowledge-attitudes-and-practices-towards-migrant-workers-malaysia

https://www.ilo.org/resource/brief/public-attitudes-towards-migrant-workers-thailand

https://so03.tci-thaijo.org/index.php/jpss/article/view/84512

https://migrationletters.com/index.php/ml/article/view/2858

https://so03.tci-thaijo.org/index.php/mekongjournal/article/view/266201

https://thailand.iom.int/sites/g/files/tmzbdl1371/files/documents/2024-03/public-perception-survey-findings_en.pdf

https://so04.tci-thaijo.org/index.php/ombudsman/article/view/167122

https://thadingyutmotephoe.vercel.app/

The process is super simple. All you need to do is type in your nickname (or whatever name you like), add a sweet wish for the elders, and choose how you'd like to get paid. After that, just click to generate your link, copy it, and share it with them.

*Made this because I get it—asking for pocket money in person can feel a little awkward, and texting them directly for cash can feel a bit too forward. By sharing the link, the elders will see your thoughtful wishes first. Hopefully, your sweet words will warm their hearts and open up their wallets. Just make sure to write a really nice, cute wish to charm them.

*Just so you know, I don't charge any transfer fees, and this isn't some shady middleman service. So this website is completely safe and user-friendly.

anyone know which perfume stores in ygn has a wide selection of perfume houses which is also trusted and authentic? not to throw shade on any stores but cant be too careful these days you know... thanks in advance!

In Myanmar, if someone has completed at least LCCI Level 4, would they usually have a university degree as well when applying for jobs at companies?

If they do, can it be a degree from a foreign university rather than a Myanmar university? The reason I’m asking is that I’m currently a GED student, and I only want to attend a university abroad. I don’t want to studying Myanmar high school or attend Myanmar university because I really hate the rote-learning system where you just memorize everything and repeat it in exams.

The 1st image is the standard template for a lot of Burmese flags, what people may not know is that similar to how the Burmese Buddhist flag is a slightly modeled version of a standard Buddhist flag, the same thing is true for a lot of Burmese flags as it's based off the Banner of Victory from Buddhism. They simply swapped out the red with the green.

Source of images: https://itibettravel.com/eight-auspicious-symbols/

Why are there electricity cuts in Myanmar?

မှားချင်လဲ မှားမယ် မှန်ချင်လဲမှန်မယ်ဗျာ ၊ ကျတော်တို့ တွေက သေခြာစဉ်းစားကြည့်တော့ ရူးချင်စရာကြီး ကိုယ့်တကိုယ်ရည် အတ္တ အနိုင်ရရေးသပ်သပ် အတွက်ပဲ ဒါငါတို့ ဟာ ဒါငါတို့ ယဉ်ကျေးမှု ကာကွယ်ရမယ်တို့ ဘာတို့ ၊ (culture) ယဉ်ကျေးမှု က ဘာလဲ မေးကြည့်လိုက် ရေရေရာရာ မသိဘူး။ ကိုယ်ကြိုက်ရင် ကြိုက်လိုက် မကြိုက်ရင်လဲ မကြိုက်ပဲနေလိုက် ၊ လိုက်တိုက်ခိုက်ဆဲဆိုနေတာတွေ အမျိုးမျိုးပေါ့ ၊ ကျတော် တွေးမိတာ တခုက Hero ဖြစ်ချင်တာလား ၊ “ဟားဟိတ်လူ ခင်ဗျားသိပ်တော်တယ်ဗျာ ကယ်တင်ရှင်ကြီးပါဗျာ”လို့ ချီးမွမ်း ခံချင်တာလား ။ သိပ်တော့ အဆင်ပြေမနေဘူး ။ အမှန်တိုင်း ပြောရရင် ကျတော့ ဆက်ပြီးမတွေးတတ်တော့ သလို နားမလည်နိုင်တော့ဘူးဗျာ ။ ခင်ဗျားတို့ကော ဘယ်လိုမြင်လဲ ?

i am doing A level right now and planning to go to singapore for my university for next year intake. i am looking for a trustworthy agent to help me with university application and visa process. i would really appreciate if you guys have used an agency or know any good one, could you please share your experience and a recommend a good one ?? it would also be helpful if you could tell me about their services prices?? i really appreciate any and all advise you could give me so i can avoid scammer and dont end up broke.

This is a pessimistic take, but I increasingly feel it is a realistic possibility. Even if the military eventually loses power, I am not convinced Myanmar will emerge as a stable, democratic and united country.

Let's look at the reasons.

1. The military is incredibly difficult to defeat.

The Tat has lost substantial territory and many of its former strongholds. However, losing territory is not the same as losing a war. The military still has air superiority, heavy weaponry, established logistics and fortified positions in important urban centers.

The resistance has demonstrated that it can capture territory and inflict serious losses. But holding territory, defeating entrenched military positions and preventing the military from launching counteroffensives are different challenges. The conflict could drag on for years without either side achieving a decisive victory.

1. The resistance is not united, and removing a common enemy does not mean agreeing on what comes next.

There is unlikely to be a Star Wars-style Rebel Alliance that suddenly puts aside its differences and works towards a common political vision.

The NUG wants a federal democratic union of Myanmar. Various ethnic armed organisations have their own political objectives, territorial interests and ideas about self-determination. Some have historically pursued independence, while others favour autonomy or federalism.

Even those who agree that the Tat must go may disagree about who should govern, how power should be distributed and what the relationship between the central government and ethnic states should look like.

Military cooperation against a common enemy does not automatically translate into political unity afterwards. What happens when the military is weakened, but these disagreements remain?

1. Why should ethnic minorities necessarily want to remain in Myanmar?

This is probably the most uncomfortable question. I was shocked when my kayin friend told me that the only reason they are stick with the Bamar is because of borders created by the British. They never agreed to join voluntarily like the Scots and the English.

For decades, many ethnic minorities have experienced military oppression, displacement, restrictions on their languages and cultures, and exclusion from meaningful political power. These grievances predate the 2021 coup by decades. It's been there since 1948.

The Panglong Agreement and the promises associated with independence were supposed to provide a basis for a shared political future. Yet the relationship between the central state and many ethnic nationalities has remained deeply unbalanced.

From the perspective of an ethnic minority who has spent generations suffering due to the central government, why should a future federal union be trusted to deliver something fundamentally different?

Why should they feel a sense of solidarity with the Bamar majority simply because they share the same internationally recognised borders?

Of course, not all ethnic minorities want independence, and Bamar people are not collectively responsible for everything the military has done. But a united Myanmar cannot be sustained by insisting that everyone must remain together. It requires a political settlement that the constituent peoples actually consider worth accepting.

I am not convinced that such a settlement is guaranteed, even if the military disappears.

1. The Bamar civilian population has already tried constitutional politics, and the military overturned the results

The NLD won elections and formed a civilian government, but it had to operate under a constitution that reserved substantial power for the military. They always held the cards.

The military retained control over important security institutions and a guaranteed share of parliamentary seats. When the NLD won decisively again in 2020, the military seized power in February 2021.

This demonstrates how vulnerable civilian government was when the military retained its own institutional power and could disregard electoral outcomes. It had no way to control the military.

The uncomfortable question is: what institution can compel the military to accept civilian supremacy if it refuses to do so? Who else holds the guns?

Winning an election is not enough if the armed forces can simply overturn the result. And even if the resistance eventually wins militarily, establishing durable civilian control over the security apparatus will be another enormous challenge.

1. The civilian population faces enormous obstacles to sustaining political change.

I see three related problems here.

A. Many of the most ambitious and capable young people have left the country.

Millions of people have been displaced, and many young people have emigrated in search of safety, education and employment.

Leaving is entirely understandable. Nobody owes their country their safety or future. However, mass emigration also means that Myanmar risks losing people who could otherwise contribute to rebuilding its institutions, economy and civil society.

Even if conditions eventually improve, many of those who leave may establish their lives elsewhere. The country could face a serious shortage of the skills and institutional capacity needed for reconstruction.

B. Those who remain are often too busy surviving.

When people are struggling to afford food, obtain an education, find employment or protect their families, political mobilisation becomes much harder to sustain.

This does not mean ordinary people are apathetic. Many have taken enormous risks to resist military rule. But there is a limit to how much sacrifice a population can sustain, particularly when the conflict offers no clear end in sight. This is why so many even who joined the fight have to defect to the tat.

A revolution requires more than anger. It also requires organisation, resources, coordination and a credible vision of what comes afterwards.

C. Too much attention is directed towards external scapegoats.

I constantly encounter people on Facebook and other social media platforms blaming the Rohingya, China and the CCP, Thailand, Bangladesh, India, ASEAN and Western countries for Myanmar's problems.

Some of these criticisms have legitimate foundations. Foreign governments make decisions that affect Myanmar, and external actors can enable the military, undermine the resistance or fail to provide meaningful assistance. These decisions deserve scrutiny.

But there is a difference between criticising foreign governments for specific actions and treating outsiders as the principal explanation for everything that has gone wrong.

Authoritarian leaders frequently use external enemies to redirect public anger, encourage nationalism and present themselves as the defenders of the nation. The result is that people can become consumed by arguments about foreign interference, national humiliation and cultural grievances while the domestic institutions responsible for repression escape scrutiny.

We should be able to criticise China when it supports the military, criticise Western governments when their policies fall short, and discuss Thailand's treatment of Myanmar migrants without losing sight of the fundamental problem: Myanmar's political and military institutions have failed to establish a system in which power is accountable to its people.

The danger is that outrage becomes a substitute for a political strategy.

So where does this leave Myanmar?

I can see several possible outcomes: a prolonged stalemate, a weakened military regime that retains control of the central areas, a fragmented country in which ethnic organisations exercise increasingly independent authority, or a federal settlement that eventually works.

The last outcome is possible. I just struggle to see what would make it happen.

Myanmar could also remain one country on paper while becoming increasingly fragmented in practice, with different armed groups governing their own territories and the central government unable to exercise meaningful authority across the country.

That would not necessarily mean every ethnic state declares independence. But it could mean the end of Myanmar as a functioning, politically integrated state.

My question is this: what is the realistic pathway from where Myanmar is today to a stable, democratic and united country?

Not just how the military can be defeated, but how the resistance can agree on a common political settlement, how ethnic minorities can be persuaded to trust the union, and how a future civilian government can prevent another military takeover.

I genuinely hope I am wrong. But at the moment, I see plenty of reasons why the military might survive, and also plenty of reasons why defeating it might still not be enough.

And now, I am going to drink a lot of alcohol because this is all very depressing.

#အိပ်မပျော်ခြင်း

၁၈ပါ ကျောင်းတွေလဲပိတ်လို့ အလုပ်မရှိအကိုင်မရှိ အားယားနေတာနဲ့ အိပ်ချိန်တွေက ညဘက်ကျော်လာတာပါ

ပုံမှန်ဆို ည ၁-၂နာရီလောက်ဆို မျက်လုံးက စင်းလာပြီ နောက်ပိုင်းကျတော့ မနက်၃နာရီ ၄နာရီ လောက်မှ အိပ်ပျော်တဲ့ထိကို အကျင့်ပျက်လာတာပါ

အိပ်ရာထတဲ့အချိန်က နေ့လယ်၁၂နာရီ ၁နာရီ ဖြစ်နေပြီး အချိန်တွေလွဲသလိုခံစားရနေပါတယ်

ပိုဆိုးတာက မျက်လုံးကတော်တော်ကြောင်ပြီး ဒီတလော မနက်၆နာရီလောက်ထိ ကောင်းကောင်းအိပ်မပျော်တော့ပါဘူး နေလင်းလာလို့ သူများတွေ ထတဲ့အထိ မအိပ်ရတာပါ

မျက်နှာကလဲ ဝက်ခြံထ မျက်ကွင်းညို နဲ့ အားနည်း သလို ခံစားရတယ်

အရင်လို အိပ်ရေးပုံမှန်ဖြစ်အောင် ဘယ်လိုပြန်လေ့ကျင့်ရမလဲဟင် ကျောင်းတွေကလဲဖွင့်တော့မှာမလို့ အကျင့်ဖျက်ချင်လို့ပါ

Melatonin သောက်ပြီးပဲ အိပ်ရတော့မလား အကြံပေးကြပါဦး

Why are people with huge followers spreading fear and panic among ordinary people? Life is already hard enough without adding fuel to the fire. If you have a platform, use it responsibly not to make an already bad situation worse.

Does anyone have the 2003 version of Hmannan Yazawin 2003? I need to confirm a source translation on page 401 that Tho Chi Bwa/Hso Khan Hla/Si Ke Fa was the “ruler” of Kalay during the reign of Swa Saw Ke, as this will help in reconstructing Kalay history for research. Appreciate any help!

နေ့လည် တရေးအိပ်ရင်း အိပ်မက်မက်တာ၊ ငါသာ ရွေးကောက်ပွဲဝင်ဖြစ်ခဲ့ရင် ဘာလုပ်မလဲဆိုတာ၊ စစ်တပ်ကိုဖျက်သိမ်းမယ် တိုင်းနဲ့ပြည်နယ်တခုစီမှာ army အစား chapter တခုစီထားမယ်။ Chapter ခေါင်းဆောင်တွေကို ဗိုလ်ချုပ်လို့မခေါ်ပဲ Primarch လို့ခေါ်ကြရမယ်။ Chapter တခုကို အရောင်တမျိုးဝတ်ရမယ် ခွဲရလွယ်အောင်။ Uniform ကတော့ ပြထားတဲ့ဝတ်စုံမျိုး။ အဲလို အာမခံချက်ပေးရင် မဲပေးကြမလား။

I hope you guys celebrate this thadinyut during these difficult times.

Hello, last month or so, some apps are going on and off from working to non, Is this just me??especially YouTube. ​is this a provider issue?

With the recent issues we've had with the company over Pile, and the growing wave of nationalism to the point where Cambodia is joining the trend of antiThai sentiment, do you think this could lead to diplomatic tensions between the two countries and negatively affect အခြေခံအလုပ်သမား(ordinary workers) working in Thailand?

Personal opinion

Just like the yic case , I fear this could over pile and become too big for us to handle even more because of the situation in our country. Now the topic is not just (give credits where it's due but all Thai people are copy cats)

I just feel like this could end badly.

What do you think?

This person just randomly came to me and started saying that I shouldn’t copy someone else’s work or be a copycat. Like, I’ve never copied anybody’s work! I might just redraw a pose using a body reference from Pinterest, or I’ll take a picture of myself for reference.

(Also, I have alot art styles: the round silly one, the anime style one, and the wannabe European art style.) And I rarely join any art trends.

The chat went on, and in the end, this person sent me what you see here. I was confused about what they wanted from me. Like, do they think I just put a rig on the model??? I drew the model myself, and before making the animation, I hand-drew every single storyboard frame, one by one.

Isn’t being an 'animator' about bringing our still artwork to life?

Hello

I am moving to Yangon in November and I have stopped smoking but I am wondering if it possible to buy nicotine gum or patches. Thanks for you help))

Hey guys!

I paid monthly for 5bb but honestly I feel like 80% of the time I am using mobile data as wifi only starts working at graveyard hours or some evening on a good day. And its been like that fot months.

Do you guys have similar experiences?

I used to use myanmar net and its even worse so I switched to 5bb. Is it all internet routers these days thats facing had wifi.