I’m not doing anything, so I thought I’d tell you what some of my friends are doing

I’m upcountry at the moment. I work about 7 hours per day, and spend the other 17 in a lovely little bungalow on a lake, 40 kilometers from the nearest 7-11. Each day I spend a bit of time reading a novel, too much time on the internet, and then I fill a lot of time on the phone with friends, who would probably rather be out having a good time instead of entertaining me.

Since I’m not doing anything at all, I thought I’d share a few stories.

One Thai girl I know (not from P4P) went out to Spicy Club last night. She reports that she and her friend had one drink each. Being good Thai girls they were on budget, so they asked for the bill after one drink and decided to go home. My friend says that she had stopped at the ATM on the way to the club and withdrawn 1,000 baht. The only money she had was this note, and she used it to pay the 360 baht bill.

The server never returned her change.

She talked to the manager who said that if she didn’t know which server took her money (and she didn’t) then there was nothing he could do.

Taking a 640 baht hit is a big deal for a Thai girl, so she was pretty upset. She said she was so bothered that she couldn’t sleep last night.

And I thought that only farangs got cheated in Bangkok.

Another mate of mine called to say he is flying in from overseas this week. He said that he was planning to stay with a Thai girl he met on his last trip here a few months ago (not, he insists, a P4P girl).

A day later he called me and reported that somehow things had gone off the rails with the girl. He would NOT be staying at her place. He was thinking of canceling his trip.

I pointed out that I am out of town for another week, and offered him the use of my room as his base of operations. With that incentive he decided to make the trip, and I believe he plans on having sex with as many women as possible in 7 days as revenge on the girl who backed out on him. Actually, I don’t think revenge has anything to do with it… I think he just likes having lots of sex.

He agreed to clean up any messy spills before I return to Bangkok.

Around 5 pm today I called a friend of mine, catching him in his apartment. I started chatting to him, and then sensed some impatience in him. After a minute or two he told me that I had interrupted a “photo shoot”. He had brought a girl home (I think she’s a g-club dancer, though I wasn’t completely clear on that) and was busily snapping pictures of her. He asked if he could call me back later.

Sure.

He rang back after about 4 hours. He’d had a good session with the camera, after which the girl showed her appreciation in the best way possible.

He emailed about a half dozen of the photos to me, and it turns out that they were good quality shots, and the girl was attractive enough to be worth the trouble. In the photos she was dressed in a sexy little white mini-dress. Sitting here in the middle of the wilderness I envied him.

I called the Dude today. He just returned from 2 or 3 weeks of holiday in America visiting his mother and catching up with old friends. His news was that he had been on a date shortly after he got back from the US. Turns out he made contact with a girl via the Tagged website on the internet, and they arranged a date.

His description of her was unenthusiastic. Clearly he wasn’t inspired by her. There was no thought of sex.

In fact, he’s the second person this week who’s told me nearly identical stories.

Last week Penfold reported to me that one girl he’d made contact with via an internet chat site had showed up for a dinner date a few days earlier. He said that she quite pretty, but that she was so deadeningly boring that he couldn’t wait for dinner to end, and that when it did, he put her in a taxi and sent her home without even trying to bang her.

Penfold and the Dude… 0 for 2 on internet dates last week.

Another mate of mine emailed from Australia to recommend a podcast system for studying Thai. He said he’d recently started using it, and was very impressed with it (learn-thai-podcast.com). I’ve heard him speaking Thai… his skill level is about the same as mine, or better, so I figured if he was recommending it I should check it out.

I have plenty of time on my hands, so it seemed like a good thing that I could spend time on this week.

I went to the site, read a little bit about it, and decided to download a free podcast to see what it was like. Ten minutes after I pressed the “download” button I was still staring at the impossibly slow progress of the green download meter, and wondering how long it would take to get the lesson in my computer.

GRSM is nice for staying in touch while traveling, but the speed is too slow for a lot of internet applications. I ended up just closing the link… I’ll try out the podcast when I’m back in my room with my ADSL connection.

Finally, the most exciting news that I can offer about my life today is that I have been accomplishing one thing during my time away from Bangkok. With no beer and no restaurants I have been highly focused on my weight loss efforts. After achieving quite a lot over a period of several months, my weight had increased in April and May by about 3 kilos.

This week I have been working hard at making up the lost ground. I’m happy to say that I’ve dropped 2.5 kilos this week, and I am just over a kilo above my best weight (recorded at the end of January).

If I stay disciplined for another week – and I have every intention of doing so – I believe I can lose another two kilos, and post my lowest weight for a decade.

My favorite go go dancer will be back in Bangkok this week. When I see her – if I see her – I should be about 11 kilos lighter than I was when she saw me at Christmastime. I haven’t reached my ultimate goals yet for weight and fitness, but I’m definitely noticeably thinner and stronger than I was six months ago or a year ago.

It won’t make any difference to her, I’m sure, but I’ll feel better about myself.

The nurse called me this week, saying that she had to work 3 shifts (24 hours) in a period of 42 hours. Brutal.

The snuggler will arrive at my bungalow on Wednesday afternoon if she manages to follow her plan.

I can’t wait to get back to Bangkok.

One week and counting.