Last night I flew to Bangkok from Singapore. At the boarding gate I had a few moments to spare, so decided to practice some Thai phrases, in hope of committing them to memory.

There was one spare seat between two young Thai ladies; on it lay a duty free bag. With an eyebrow raise known the world over I questioned whether the seat was available. The more attractive (but only slightly) of the two ladies smiled and placed the bag at her feet. As I sat down I caught the eye of the other Thai girl and smiled. Insurance, you see.

With a practiced neck stretch I turned to my right, more to reassure myself of the girl’s superior beauty than for any rehabilitative purposes. A fraction of a glance rang a tiny note of alarm. Though undeniably attractive, there was a toughness that gave me pause. I stole a second glance, searching for any throat irregularity, but her long hair served as a highly effective mask.

Undeterred I pulled out my iPhone, started up Lingopal and played ‘Hello’ in Thai. Straightaway the girl to my left turned and looked quizzically at my phone. Let the Games begin.

Fortuitously I ended up sitting directly behind this young lady in the plane. Equally fortuitously the couple beside her were boisterous twits, and I happened to have a spare seat beside me.

A student of English in Singapore, Ray was returning to Thailand for the weekend to see her sister. She told me a little about her English course, and showed me a book she was reading, an abridged version of Robin Hood. She was confused about some words though:

‘A Sheriff, Ray, is a policeman.’
‘Poh-leece. Ah.’
‘Nottinghamshire is a place. Like a big village.’
‘Village, ok.’
‘A Forester is… ‘ – I was flummoxed for a moment – ‘… an old-fashioned word for a man who lives in the jungle.’ I don’t think she got a word of that.

I told her that I was planning on travelling around Thailand, testing the phone she had seen earlier, and chose this moment to rehearse all the phrases I had placed in the Favorites section.  The combination of the Flirting lines with the disclosure that my itinerary included Pattaya, led her to advise what to search for and avoid in potential Thai girlfriends.

Pattaya girls, she said, only want your money. When she went there on holiday a little while ago, all the European men kept asking her ‘How much? How much?’
‘The beasts,’ I sympathised.

Ray on the plane from Singapore to Bangkok

A little while later she sheepishly pulled a sheet of paper from her handbag and showed it to me. It was a report card of her studies, with marks ranging from 43% to 55%. It looked depressingly familiar.

I challenged her to write something of our conversation. This is what she wrote:

The plane was descending at the time, hence the shaky hand. Perceptive readers will note however, that the final sentence reads as a reward for my efforts earlier.