How can you not love Thailand?

I’m a little bit drunk, sat here smoking cigarettes with that massive fish glaring at me from his tiny tank, and a big bottle of Leo beer.
I can hear the ocean, I think,,,yes I can, but I can also hear the refrigerator running.
I’m trying to think how I should describe Thailand to people.
Like I said earlier, if we’d have come here, or to any tourist destination before we’d had the privilege of seeing Thailand with people who’ve lived here for ten years, I really don’t think I would have loved it nearly so much.
To us, waiting for Kev and Jayne to finish work, drinking coffee in a restaurant in the shopping mall in Bang Pon, with people who seem delighted to see us has been an experience that we will remember before drinking in a bar in a tourist destination.
And yet, as I write this, a massive toad just passed by, inches from my mosquito ravaged foot. The toads I will remember too.
We passed over the train track, by where Kev and Jayne live, and I asked if there is any indication given that a train is coming. They said that the gates are closed, if the bloke who’s job it is to close the gates is awake, and I looked left, as we bumped over the tracks, and there was a scooter coming at us!
The ladyboys who serve you in the 7/11 don’t always understand that I’m asking for cigarettes, but when I finally get through, with the few words of Thai I have, even though I know that if I speak English they will get it, they’re so endearingly pleased that I’ve tried, (and that’s probably the only time you’ll hear me say that I’ve been trying to please a ladyboy) that my heart sings. 
There is a legend that Koh Samet has buried pirate treasure on it, and, if we’d come here twenty years ago it would probably seem more plausible than it does today. Take away the beach fireworks and the resorts and it’s everyone’s idea of a desert island, just about five miles long and a mile wide, I never thought I’d get to bum on beaches of sand so fine and so white its like walking on snow, only it’s warm, and I apologize to everyone back home who I know are walking on snow.
Right now it’s twenty six degrees, as I sit here, just finished the last of my Leo. I’d stay here forever, if I could.
I’ve just decided that that is going to stay in my blog, even if I wake tomorrow and read it and decide that it’s a bit too sentimental