It’s the last day of the month. On this Friday, eight motorcycle drivers are waiting at the perimeter of a factory, 60 km from Bangkok. A throng of workers exit the factory. They hand over their ATM cards to the drivers, who know the passwords. Nobody smiles. They speed off, return twenty minutes later, having emptied the accounts for the debts owed with 10% to 30% interest for the month.
Thailand has experienced significant economic growth and development for several decades, and even in the worst of times, it’s been resilient. Thailand recovered from the Tom Yum Goong crisis of 1997 and weathered the global financial crisis of 2008, and Covid of 2019-2022, all rather spectacularly.
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