Sawaddee kaa, I'm Valerie, or มุ้ย :)
The OG Fake Thai and self-proclaimed President of the Fake Thai Club. The stork delivered me to Bangkok a couple of months after I was born in Hong Kong, and I've been blessed to call the "City of Angels" home ever since.
I went to school in Thailand, ate Thai food, gossiped in Thai with my friends, sang Thai songs in the shower and couldn't care less about K-drama because I'm all about Thai soap operas.
I'm not Thai by blood, but Thailand raised me. The language, the culture, the way I think about food and family and friendship — that's all Thailand.
When I speak Thai, people don't hear an accent. They hear a local. And then they look at my face and the confusion kicks in. I've had taxi drivers do a double take in the rearview mirror. I've had street food aunties pause mid-sentence to stare at me. I once made an airport receptionist in Chiang Mai visibly glitch because she'd already mentally prepared her English and I hit her with fluent Thai instead.
It never gets old.
Why I Built This
I grew up in Thailand and the thing that stuck with me most was the people. The warmth. The kindness. The ไม่เป็นไร's. The culture subconsciously teaches you to lead with generosity and that shaped who I am.
I built Fake Thai Club because I wanted to share that. The language, the culture, the things that make Thailand, Thailand — not just as a travel destination but as a place that changes the way you think about people.
But there's a bigger reason too. Thailand is still a country where many children grow up without access to quality education, especially in rural areas. My dream is for Fake Thai Club to grow into a community that believes loving Thai culture should also mean contributing to it.
That starts here. Come learn. Come fall in love with Thailand.
And eventually, come help.
What Fake Thai Means
"Fake Thai" started as a nickname a colleague gave me. When he found out I was "from Thailand," he started asking me about Thai current events, politics, legal stuff — and I had no clue. About any of it. So he started calling me Fake Thai.
It stung a little at first. But the more I sat with it, the more I realized — yeah, that's kind of exactly what I am. I sound Thai. I think in Thai sometimes. I feel more like a Thai than a Hong Konger. But I'm not ethnically Thai, and apparently I'm also not great at keeping up with the news regardless of what country I'm in.
So I leaned into it. Fake Thai is my identity. And it's an identity that I'd love to share with you all. It's for anyone who loves Thailand, speaks the language or wants to, feels connected to the culture but maybe doesn't fit neatly into a box.
Welcome to the Fake Thai Club ka :)
The Credentials..?
I don't have a teaching certificate. I don't have a linguistics degree. What I have is a lifetime of living between two cultures and a brain that absorbed an entire language and way of life through pure immersion.
I also have a really good sense of humour. Which honestly matters more than a certificate when you're trying to learn a tonal language without wanting to throw your phone across the room.
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