[poker-penguin]

No worries dude, I enjoy argument (in the more academic sense of the word).

I just picked that night to write about because it was fresh in my mind and I couldn't be bothered referring to my notes, and was too tired to write adequately about my visit to the Allied War Cemetary in Kanchanburi (for example).

Contact with real Thai people:
I spent a week living with my friend in Bangkok (going to work - although he is a DJ - grocery shopping, all that crap),
had a long discussion with a monk on a bus about whether various aspects of buddhist tradition are literally true or only true in a more spiritual sense,
gave advice / reassurance to a Karen teenager who was coming to NZ with his family as a refugee.

Those are the most flattering of my contacts with real Thai people but I did manage to spend some time off the completely beaten path (on a slightly less-beaten one). There just weren't any real Thai people in the story I chose to tell last night.

There are a number of possible explanations for you never meeting a hot single Euro chick:

1) You and I have different standards for hot (I don't find many Asian women particularly hot).

2) They invent boyfriends when talking to you and/or don't mention real ones when talking to me (I appear very non-threatening).

3) You hang out in a different kind of place to me. Not saying either is better or worse, just saying I encountered several (trekking and diving were best, Bangkok and cooking classes were the worst).

4) I lucked out.


My next trip to Thailand will almost certainly be better, since it's likely to be to do a DiveMaster internship in one of the scuba centers, and I love diving.