[LivinLOS]

I dont know if its my best memeory but this one really sticks in my mind..

For those of us that stay here long term, despite many many benefits (cost food girls etc) you do start to see the belly of the beast so to say.. The land of smiles often becomes the land of false smiles as things like T money, double pricing, inability to accept blame or responsibility etc all sink in.. Anyway I was going through a grump period on Thailand as I was having some red tape issues that were starting to make me think that I was really not welcome in Thailand (leave your money at the airport and go type of feelings that I am sure many have had)...

So I end up in Phuket Town and cause my girl had checked the movie times we inevitably ended up 5 mins after one showing had started and had 2 hours to kill until the next one.. So we walked off down the road and ended up going into T2 club just down the road from Robinson..

I was the only farang face in there with about 10 Thais at another table.. pretty quiet for the size of the club.. After 1/2 hour or so one of the managers came over smiling introduced himself and said stick around they would have a band on soon.. So the band comes on, the place fills up a bit but not much.. They are doing thai cover songs and deffo need a bit of practice but were having real fun as was the audience, everyone horsing around and having a laugh... There was one flagrant gay guy funnily bouncing about and pretending to swoon over the lead singer (it was obvious many of them knew each other well)...

Then the guitarist comes on the mike and says something in Thai that had my girl bouncing about in fits of joy and clapping and I could tell I was being talked about... Far from giving me any wind up he had just told her to apologize to me that he could not speak english well enough and want to say it was great to see a farang happy to come out to a Thai place and socialize and to say to her I was really welcome.. He then tried his best in broken engrish to say "herro wercome to Phuket, and wercome to T2 crub" which then got a cheer from the rest of the whole audience and he launched into the only English song he knew...

Loads of guys then proceeded to come over shake hands, smile and press whisky soda's etc on me..

Could you imagine anything happening like that to welcome a single foriegner into a locals club back home.. Probably get the shit kicked out of him for being with one of 'our' girls..

Totally restored my faith in the 'average' Thai.. the red tape and tea money can piss you off sometimes but when it comes down to it Thais are a really open friendly lot.. Treat them with a bit of respect and away from the worst of the tourist areas it is rewarded so well.