The tanned beach boys with spiky brown hair and toothy grins who spend their time ankle-deep in the tepid waters of Phuket Island renting out power boats made a special concession to the fact that it was Christmas Day. They wore red fur-lined Santa caps. This made them as incongruous-looking to the foreign tourists as some of the topless European holidaymakers undoubtedly were to them.
Thailand is a mainly Buddhist country but Christmas celebrations were laid on for the thousands of winter holidaymakers who came for as far away as Britain, France, Germany, Scandinavia and Russia for the balmy weather, the tropical beaches and the delicious seafood.
Fir trees with twinkling lights greeted new arrivals in hotel lobbies, "Happy Xmas" signs hung over reception desks and in the evenings, choirs in full Santa Claus regalia entertained diners with Jingle Bells and White Christmas - the last thing the visitors in shorts and sandals tucking into grilled giant prawns were actually dreaming of.
This year the Thailand resorts were booked out as always for the Christmas/New Year season, and foreigners found that "Amazing Thailand", the slogan for tourism promotion in 1998, translated into amazing prices because of the collapse of the Thai currency, the baht. Unusually though there were practically no vacationers from South Korea and very few from Japan, two other Asian countries made less affluent by the economic crisis.
Many expatriates from around the region were also taking a last Asia holiday before going home for good because of hard times. Among them was a Brazilian engineer returning to South America with his wife and two daughters after a dam project in neighbouring Malaysia was abandoned by the government.
"We won't be back for two years," he forecast.
An American executive based in Singapore told me he expected that his multi-media US company would pull out of south-east Asia within weeks, as investment funds for infrastructure have dried up.
On the other hand, thousands of unemployed Thai construction workers and overseas students are returning home to a country which is in a state of near panic. Big businesses are failing and many firms and banking institutions have gone bust.
Every day the newspapers announce new austerity measures. Cabinet members are taking pay cuts, civil servants are forfeiting allowances, the air force is trying to get out of a contract to buy eight US jet fighters, dozens of diplomats who came home for the holidays will not return to their postings, and the prime minister, Chuan Leekpai, is to cut down on his foreign trips.
It is a time for desperate measures. Buddhist monks have initiated a "Thais Help Thais" campaign to collect money from everyone, even the poor, to help the exchequer and are discouraging the purchase of foreign-made goods. Out-of-work financial journalists have entered into the spirit of things by opening a cafe in Bangkok, called, appropriately enough, "Out-of-Work Journalists Cafe".
A lot of blame is being spread around for the crisis which began in July with the Bank of Thailand's futile defence of the baht at a cost of $17.2 billion. Thailand's Senate Speaker, Meechai Ruchuphan, has no doubt who the villains are. He has urged people to put a curse on currency speculators, "the profit-makers who get rich from our bones" who "should no longer live".
However, Thailand's politicians are attracting most of the popular opprobrium. Many are inexplicably rich and there was much critical comment about the fact that MPs couldn't agree to sacrifice part of their salaries despite debating the issue for a whole day just before Christmas.
None are madder at the politicians than those who lost the most, the members of Thailand's once confident and fast-growing middle class.
In Thonglor Road in an exclusive residential area of Bangkok, a weekend market for the "formerly rich" has been flourishing for eight weeks in the area around Wasun's car showrooms. There they try to make ends meet by selling off used limousines, fancy watches, jewellery, designer clothes and even a small plane.
The owner has given the customers, many of whom wear "Formerly Rich" T-shirts, a chance to vent their frustration while waiting for buyers by throwing tennis balls - three for 20p - at hardboard effigies of former prime ministers, with the aim of knocking them into a bin.
The brown-jacketed model of Chavalit Yongchaiyudh, who was forced to resign the premiership last month for his failure to prevent the financial crash, has been socked most often by well-dressed participants, some of whom were described by the Bangkok Post as "smiling devilishly" as they hurled the tennis balls at him.
Only the air crews of Thai Airways International have good reason to smile naturally these days. They get most of their income from daily allowances paid in foreign currencies which they can convert into baht.
Earlier this year the baht was 25 to the dollar. Now they can get 47 to the dollar. Funnily enough, since the crisis began, the number of air crew members calling in sick has fallen dramatically.