Give them a sense of power and they will stay. But do you really want them?

 The last verbal interaction I had was not a strictly positive one. The tattooed Thai string-bean whose mother runs the kiosk across from my hotel called me farang ngang which means: The foreigner is confused. It also doubles as: Confused foreigner. So it's not just an observation. It's a name. 

I was not particularly deserving of this appellation. After all, I had just stumbled down from my living quarters where I had been writing some heady stuff about women as power-brokers. 

This was therefore unnecessary. But the Thais are accustomed to talking about others in the third person. And so this is not an unusual situation at all. The Thais, I realize are total chauvinists, with rare and valuable exceptions. 

Apart from supplying the opportunity to learn a new word, (Ngong) What it got me to realize is that I'm on foreign turf over here. 

We seldom think of abstractions as being important. We're more wired into the physical stuff. For instance, when a foreign team plays on your home ground, there's an undeniable advantage there. No one is about to refute that.

But this was more abstract. I'm not only being exposed to a weird shop, and a weird mother and her son; but also I'm being hostilely treated. This is like a triple-tier whammy. 

There is language as well, mixed in with that language. Home ground language you might even call it. 

That home-ground turf, language, and chauvinism is exactly the reason so many love stories in Thailand turn out as horror stories. 

My last girlfriend in fact, was only out for power. Only out for money and blood (life-force). She had no other consideration in mind. Love was maybe at the bottom of the list.