Dude looks like a lady-boy

One day after lunch I follow Lian to her haircut appointment -- she arrives on her motor-bike and I come huffing along on foot a few minutes later. I walk in and Lian is talking to what I think are two people at the back of the shop: a fetching young woman with flowing dark hair in a delightfully short dress, and some fellow with a booming baritone voice, just out of sight.

Uh, my mistake: the girl and the guy turn out to be one and the same individual.

Thailand has a warm and tolerant place in its heart for its kathoey, the Thai word for transgendered or effeminate gay men, better known in English as lady-boys. Many Thais consider kathoey to be a sort of third gender.

On Thai TV, most sitcom casts include at least one screamingly flamboyant gay/cross-dressing comic-relief character. Night after night at Anusan Market, farang male tourists pose nervously with the gaudily costumed Thai lady-boys outside their nightly revue. Kathoey use the feminine polite particle of speech, ending sentences with "kaa" instead of the male "khrep," and they often work in occupations dominated by women.  Lian herself uses the pronoun "she" when referring to her lady-boy stylist.

Sure, we farang come from the land of clean drinking water at the tap, not-treacherous sidewalks and artisan bakeries. But I might not live to see red-state America ever catch up to the so-called developing world in this one cultural attitude.

---

Carrot cake and vanilla ice cream. The fifth season of "Breaking Bad." Really good pizza. Driving my own car with my kick-ass sound system reinstalled. Cooking in my own kitchen. Blu-Ray on a 92" projection screen. 21st century broadband. Conversance in the written and spoken language around me.

I am ready to come home. Home.