Riding the Depresscalator

I’ve lived in Bangkok for 15 years, which means I’ve ridden a lot of escalators at Suvarnabhumi Airport, including the famous one, a slow-moving staircase from check-in to international departures. It’s somehow become a social media phenomenon, dubbed variously the “world's saddest escalator” or, my personal favorite, the “Depresscalator”. TikTok is full of tearful tourists filming their slow ascent toward passport control, lamenting the end of what was apparently the best two weeks of their lives. I find this both understandable and faintly hilarious.

But the question it raises is a genuine one: why does Thailand do this to people? What is it about this place that makes otherwise composed adults weep on a moving staircase?

The easy answers are the obvious ones: the food, the beaches, the weather, the cost, the general ease of being here. All true. But I think those answers are incomplete. Plenty of countries offer good food and warm weather without producing this kind of departure grief. The real answer, I’ve come to believe after all these years living inside it, is something less tangible; it's the underlying culture, and specifically the way Theravada Buddhism has shaped the Thai character at a cellular level.

Buddhism has become so integrated with Thai life that the two are hardly separable. What tourists experience, often without naming it, is the downstream effect of that integration. Buddhism shapes the Thai way of looking at the world: finding joy (sanuk), seeking comfort and ease (sabai), and rolling with the punches (mai pen rai). These aren’t just words; they’re a guide for staying calm, keeping the peace, and not letting emotions run wild.

I’ve written before about these concepts in the context of Songkran, but they bear repeating here because they are genuinely what you’re soaking in when you visit Thailand, whether you know it or not. The famous Thai smile isn’t a customer service training outcome. The hospitality stems from Buddhist values of compassion, cultural concepts like sanuk, and genuine pride in welcoming visitors. Tourists feel this distinction, even if they can’t articulate it. There’s a difference between being served and being welcomed, and in Thailand, more often than not, it’s the latter.

Buddhism has influenced Thai society for centuries in terms of acceptance and kindness towards fellow people in order to maintain harmony. And metta, or loving-kindness, is the operative force behind much of what visitors experience as warmth. This loving-kindness emerges in the spontaneous assistance visitors often encounter. It’s the stranger who walks you to where you’re going rather than pointing. It’s the vendor who throws in something extra without being asked. It’s small, constant, and cumulative.

I’ve stopped noticing most of it the way a tourist does. It’s simply become the texture of daily life. But occasionally something will happen, a moment of quiet nam jai, generosity offered without expectation, and I’ll catch myself thinking: ah yes, this is why people cry on that escalator.