Bangkok Blogs

If you’ve sat in any Bangkok taxis you might be familiar with the word ‘rak’. This isn’t because Taxi drivers have a thing for us westernerners, but rather that the radio plays a constant stream of Thai pop (unless your taxi driver is from the North, in which case he will likely play Thai Country music.. an altogether different experience).

The word ‘rak’ means simply ‘love’ and you will hear it in every single Thai pop song ever made. Ever.

Why this is can only be speculated on, but my suspicion is that love sells CDs. The target market for most of these pop songs is the school kids and early university girls. The obsession with love, being loved, losing love, hearts breaking and the potential for ever-lasting love is a strong one and you would be hard pressed to find a Thai girl around this age who is not deeply concerned with similar issues.

There are a few bands who fail to mention the love word, but to make up for it, they tend to include an acoustic song which mentions the word enough times to make up for the longs which did not. This, even with so called ‘Rock’ bands.

It is repetitive, but unfortunately some of them are so catchy that you find yourself humming them in the shower, and because you are likely to only understand the odd word, you end up singing ‘rak’ rather more often that you perhaps should.