Chinese tourists wearing Thai student uniforms are warned that they may violate the law if the names embroidered on their shirts match actual school names.

The image of a group of four Chinese tourists in Thai student uniforms, with their names embroidered on the shirts, has recently gone viral on social media. The four came from Hangzhou City and they bought the uniforms from a store in Bangkok’s Bang Lamphu market.

Rachapon Sirisakorn, a lawyer, said on his Facebook page today (Wednesday) that, according to the Student Uniform Act B.E. 2551 (2008AD), if an individual, who is not a student, wears a student uniform to mislead other people into believing that he or she is a student may violate the law and may face a fine of up to 1,000 baht on conviction.

He said that, if the uniform is not embroidered with an actual school’s name, the tourist may be able to wear the uniform with impunity.

Student uniform shops, however, said that only a small number of Chinese tourists show up to buy the uniforms, adding that most buy the uniforms for photo shoots.

The owner of the Sriphan store in Bang Lamphu market told Thai PBS that, normally, she sells 1 or 2 uniforms a day to Chinese tourists and 7 yesterday. She said that it is a passing trend.

The owner of the Top store in the same area said the Chinese customers upload their images to social media and most of them buy the same type of uniform.

Li Thing and Ruan Wan-xi, two of the four Chinese tourists seen on social media in student uniforms, said they saw the Thai student uniforms in soap operas and find them cute.

The two others said they wanted to look young again and to follow in the footsteps of their idols, adding that some of their friends back in China are interested in the uniforms and asked them to buy them for them.

The four also had their names embroidered on their shirts, along with a few cute words like “suai jing” (very beautiful), “na rak” (cute) and “suai teesud” (most beautiful).

The owner of an embroidery shop said that, during the past three months, she has embroidered as many as 50 student uniforms a day for Chinese customers at 50 baht a piece.

She said that some customers asked the meaning of the words before they were embroidered, while some others knew what words they would like to be embroidered with their names.

She noted that Thai student uniforms have become trendy among some Chinese tourists, because of the influence of Chinese celebrities who post their images in student uniforms on social media.