Thai Women are Digital and Now Online

There are a lot of lonely people in the world, true, but come on, Google, you’re going to give me a bad rep here. I know, I know, scientists and philosophers need love, too, but ‘local sexy singles?’ For those of you who don’t know, I have no control over the ads that grace the halls of this blog. When I post a new update, ‘spiders’ and ‘bots’ crawl through the virtual woodwork like ants at a picnic, devouring my humble verbal offerings and rendering them into easily digestible keywords and ‘meta-tags’. So I was curious to see what ‘content related’ ads would show up at the party, given a rather hodgepodge collection of posts loosely falling under the heading of ‘travel’, and sure enough, the first results were rather predictable- apartments in Chiang Mai, townhouses in Phuket (pronounced ‘poo-get’), cheap flights to Thailand, condos in Hua Hin, condoms in Pattaya. Huh? What’s that? OK, I’m exaggerating, and admittedly, it wasn’t surprising to see “Single Thai Girls” popping up sooner or later, given the legendary beauty of Thai women and the legendary incompetence of Thai men. After all, it’s a feminine culture, and the same traits that are attractive in women are not necessarily attractive in men. Conversely, the same might be true in ‘masculine’ Western culture. Vive la difference! That’s legit anyway, women with genuinely good hearts looking for something better for themselves and their families. In Thailand, working-age offspring typically not only support the children, but the parents also. They find it hard to believe that it might be any other way any where else, despite my protestations to the contrary. So the practice of women ‘marrying out’ is now widespread and respectable, given that impeccable Thai knack for commerce through any open door, unfailing publicity, and uh, pragmatism. I wouldn’t say it’s Thailand’s number one export yet, but maybe…

So the running joke has always been that I accuse my wife, and Thai women in general, of being digital, that is, on or off, hot or cold, sweet or sour, no middle ground. “I wouldn’t know what to do with an analog girl,” I tell her. They tend to see things in very black and white terms while the rest of us are watching the movie of life in HD DVD with a helping of JPEG in HTML on the side. They’re like LCD screens with a push-button control. That’s liquid crystal display, not lowest common denominator. It’s like you turn on the tube on Christmas day and there’s a fire burning, or you buy the DVD and watch tropical fish swimming around your flat screen aquarium, probably even got a snail super-model cleaning the inside of the screen. So push the right button on a Thai bar girl and ping!, she turns on with a smile. As the liquid goes down in the cocktail-style hour-glass, so do the edges of her lips until you’ve finally got a perfect frown to go with that empty glass. “Wa ma ding?” she’ll then ask you in fluent Pidgin English and the fact that she’s merely running sweet red liquid through her veins like the stuff you put in your hummingbird feeder is irrelevant. You’ve got to feed the meter, and the meter is an old-fashioned Thai water-clock, complete with an ice cube on top that will clean your nose at no extra charge. Why is that extra cube always there? Nobody knows. Where’s Seinfeld when you need him? But the girl always smiles on cue even when she doesn’t understand a word you say, nodding her head agreeably like a flower waving in the breeze. Order up another round and the screen refreshes itself, and you, with a smile. Sound good? Apply here. My wife always told me that people would want to hear about Thai girls and lady boys, not the abstract considerations that tend to preoccupy me.

But ads for ‘local sexy singles?’ That’s different. What did I do to deserve that? That has nothing to do with Thailand and everything to do with sex. Lord knows there are plenty of other blogs out there that deal with that subject a little bit more, uh, directly, than I do. Do a search on most-used Google search keywords and it’s the same in every category: sex, or maybe boobs. Search politics: it’s sex; religion: sex; hardware: sex; software: sex. But what does any of that have to do with me? Okay, I did do an expose,’ heh heh, of webcam girls and I am always rather interested in the various manifestations that can ensue culturally out of our obsession with that one seminal event that sustains us- the reproductive act. That’s okay; it’s good for evolution. But that’s not the same as selling sexual services. I feel like a pimp… Actually, it doesn’t feel that bad. Anyway, I was curious to see what would happen with the ads when I stopped writing about Thailand so much, simply because I’m not there right now. Well, the first clues came with my blog on Cambodia. All of a sudden, instead of ads for tourism, travel, adventures, and single girls, I’m showing ads for veterans’ benefits, war videos, and genocide ring tones. Huh? Genocide ring tones? I don’t make this stuff up. If you don’t believe me, follow my blogs one at the time, only one blog to the page, to see them change with each page. Don’t know how to do that? Google me, or google the blog’s main keywords, ‘Thailand’ and ‘Timbuktu’, that is. On a good day, I’ll come up number one. Click on that and they’ll send you to the site, but only one page. Then creep through older or newer posts. Or, just trust me, and I’ll walk you through it. The next blog we’re back in Thailand and now not just ‘meeting Thai girls (for serious relation)’ but taking ‘Thai gay tours’. I wonder what sights they visit. I bet there are a lot of statues and monuments. Did you know that ‘Ladyboys of Thailand’ has good prices? I wonder what they’re selling. I can’t click my own ads for fear of being accused of ‘spamming’. But you can. Some people like canned ham, especially out in ‘da islands’, where commodities are scarce.

With the immigration blog we get ‘green card’ ads and with the ‘dark side’ blog we get Thai ‘yoga’ massage ads, all the while flogging and blogging ‘single Thai girls.’ Hmmm. Then the funniest one comes up with the Thai food blog, an ad by Pepto-Bismol. Ya’ gotta’ love it. Well, when I do my first American blog it takes them a while to adjust, and they’re still doing Thai ads. Come the ‘tsunami’ blog and they’re right on top of it, with ads to ‘help disaster victims’ and ‘adopt orphans’. Cool. But what will they do when I mention ‘jihad’? Drum roll here, please. Depending on what day you check, you might get something on politics or George Bush or maybe even ‘learn Arabic online’, but guaranteed you’ll get something on, guess what? Travel insurance. Do a blog on world music and blues, and they manage one music download site, but other than that it’s travel to Thailand. They like me there, plenty of advertisers that pay. I bet the next one will be more gals, or gays. Nope. Talk about over-population and gas prices and they freak, nothing but one banner-sized ad about Gulf hurricane relief, and empty spaces, when I usually have four small ads. Don’t try to pin a meta-tag on me, mother-flipper (just when they thought they had me figured out). You can’t exactly sell Thai girls in the same breath as talking about over-population, now can you? Nope. Kills the urge. All these decisions are made at the speed of light, mind you, millions of little bits and bytes, 0’s and 1’s, flickering on and off, semi-conducting, each second. The full multi-blog home page now shows ads for NGO’s and teaching English overseas. Sounds boring and depressing. I’ve let Google down. We could use some Thai girls to liven up this bash. I have a feeling they’ll be back. Mr. Google misses them, and he’s letting me know that, by keeping me out of the search engine rankings this week after that last depressing blog. Over-population indeed! We want more Thai girls! You got it, bro. You got it. I miss my Thai girl, too (though on second thought next time they placed two ads side by side top dead center one with ‘Arabic Classes’ and another with ‘Learn Hebrew Abroad’). Salaam. Shalom. There is a God.