When male farangs get together and drink copious moments of beer it will usually lead to some very lively intercourse and humorous banter. In United States, we call this exchange between male friends -‘shooting the shit”. When I was in the Yunnanese village of Mae Salong in Northern Thailand, I inadvertently joined one of these ‘shit sessions” at Shin Shane Guesthouse aka Farang Central.

All of these guys - two were Dutch, one was German and one was a Swede - were in my age group, early to mid 50’s - and they were very seasoned travelers-road warriors, having journeyed to Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Russia, Iran, Kurdistan, Uzbekistan and other exotic oddball places. Compared to these blokes, I was the equivalent of a virgin traveler. Of course, the conversation started with how could America elect such a moronic president like George Bush and drifted to an exchange of traveler’s stories and anecdotes. As it was getting late, I excused myself after sharing a round of beer.

Shortly before leaving, Mr. Swede told me that they were going to solve the world’s problems, and the next morning, they would tell me what to do.

That was one of the funniest lines I have heard. These guys were a real riot and I enjoyed my brief encounter with them, even though I had to tolerate their noxious cigarette smoke. For the full story, go to Tales from Farang Central.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 13th, 2007 at 9:33 am and is filed under Humor, Thailand, travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.