The Sawasdee Boy Statue stands 30-60" tall and features plain red pants. It is meticulously hand-carved from solid wood in Northern Thailand by highly skilled artisans. The wai gesture originates in Buddhism and shares similarities with the namaste gesture in Hinduism. This gesture signifies the equal meeting of the two palms, representing the other party as an equal human being. The word often spoken with the wai as a greeting or farewell is "sawatdi" (RTGS for สวัสดี, pronounced [sā.wàt.dīː], sometimes romanized as sawasdee). This verbal greeting is usually followed by "kha" when spoken by a female and by "khrap" when spoken by a male person. The word sawatdi was coined in the mid-1930s by Phraya Upakit Silapasan of Chulalongkorn University. Derived from the Sanskrit svasti (स्वस्ति meaning 'well-being'), it had previously been used in Thai only as a formulaic opening to inscriptions. The strongly nationalist government of Plaek Phibunsongkhram in the early 1940s promoted its use in the government bureaucracy and the wider populace as part of a broader set of cultural edicts to modernize Thailand.
