ROTFL yes. LOL, most here in the US are a poor excuse for their window name. The Triads are very active in the US, but some are run by honest folks trying to make enough to send home to support family.
Russ, your stories really illustrate the Thai - Westerner relationship misconceptions and issues as well as the happiness in small things that the ordinary Thai bring to their hard lives. If one is unattached, there is nothing like a relationship with a Thai lady ( in the traditional meaning ). The hardest thing is to not become a walking ATM for the family, LOL.
Frank
Hi Frank, One problem I had in Thailand is that the people under my command were, in fact, unattached for a year. As you point out, the Thai are wonderful people, full of
sanuk, which is hard to translate but comes across to me as a capacity for fun. My unattached people always were looking for fun, and once we stopped bombing in Cambodia they had an awful lot of time available for fun. As I told Bob, sometimes the resulting behavior was predictable; sometimes bizarre. Most of the time our people were able to break away, come home, and forget about all that. Some weren't, and in a few cases the result was tragic: a few broken-hearted Thai girls on one end, and on the other end people who couldn't believe their
tealocks would take up with someone else. It was interesting, if sometimes sad. It was life! Once I got back in the States I found I had to write about it -- I guess to sort out my own feelings.