"Don't drink the tapwater" is a common refrain, and has helped put a smile on the owners of plastic bottle factories that sell water throughout the country.
But Bangkok's Metropolitan Waterworks Authority is taking aim at critics in a high-profile way this weekend.
The MWA has entered samples of Bangkok water into the oldest, biggest water-tasting competition in the world.
This weekend's Berkeley Springs International Water Tasting, an event taken - by some - as seriously as wine or beer tasting, begins on Thursday in the US spa town of Berkeley Springs, West Virginia.
Taste aside, the contest may also help to settle an old MWA claim that its water is pure, and any impurities or contaminants are strictly from the pipes and tunnels that deliver it to homes, offices and restaurants.
Tasters in tuxedos and fancy gowns will seriously sip and sample the look, smell and taste of MWA's water, and rate and rank it compared with 100 other samples of water from every US state, as well as Canada, Croatia, Chile, Japan and the K-water Mi-ryang Water Works, of Mi-ryang Lake, South Korea.
In the words of the organisers, "Municipal waters compete for the coveted honor of best tasting tap water at 2:30pm" (2:30am Sunday, Thailand time).
The MWA, wisely no doubt, did not enter the contest's Packaging Design Entries section.
SOURCE / Bangkok Post