On one side, From the perspectives of many in the urban middle class, the Thai
countryside is seen as the antithesis of urbanity. In the past, the countryside was regarded as backward and underdeveloped. This has changed as the Thai countryside has been romanticized and seen as something to be preserved. The public media, government policy, tastes and lifestyles of the urban middle class are key mechanisms that create and maintain this representation. Such a view has led to certain attitudes and ways of thinking about rurality and has even influenced the direction of government
policies on rural development. It has become a process that penetrates ways of thinking and creates social expectations among the urban middle class that does not necessarily have first-hand knowledge about the Thai countryside, about the nature of Thai
rurality. As influential groups in society shared similar beliefs about Thai rurality, these beliefs are communicated and reinforced, gradually becoming real at a wider societal level as well.