The REAL Thais, The REAL Thailand

Despite what you might have seen on TV lately, Thailand's capacity for heart-warming humanity never ceazes to amaze.You can be having a shitty day (for whatever personal or professional reasons) and then suddenly out of the blue a random human kindness is rained upon you, and you remember all the reasons why Thailand is such a wonderful place to visit, or indeed live. It's the Thai people.

A couple of weeks ago I moved house. A truckful of movers (typical labourer types, if a little older than one might imagine) arrived, loaded my boxes, and trundled off to the specified address. At the other end, they took it upon themselves to arrange things like paintings and ornaments, etc, artfully in my living room. A nice touch, and certainly above and beyond my expectations at the meagre rate I was paying them.

Most of what they put in place, I've left as is, because the items look fine there.

And just yesterday, as I set off to ride from 7-11 back home with a bag full of milk and bottles of water, the bag gave way, sending bottles flying all over the road. By the time I'd stopped, a contruction worker/ driver waiting on the other side of the road had scooped up the rolling bottles, and brought them across to me. Seeing my dilemma of now having nothing to carry them in anymore, he then went back to his pick-up and fetched another plastic bag for me. Humbling, jing jing!

All in an average day in the REAL Thailand. Had this happened in, say, Sydney, I can imagine the average construction worker just standing there, thinking 'ya stupid wanker' and walking off to laugh with his mates about it.

All things being equal, is there a kinder nation of people on the face of this earth than the Thais?