Not everyone in Bangkok is out to rip you off

That can be a hard lesson to keep in mind with the constant scamming and touting that goes on around here, but let me share with you a very special story... Two days ago I was walking along the edge of Bangkok's Royal Field on my way to the palace compound, home of several of the city's main photo-ops and cultural treasures. I paused to examine the content of a food-vendor's cart. The old woman was doing a brisk business selling roasted grashoppers and fried grub worms (I haven't tried them yet; I'm building up to it). A middle-aged Thai man, contentedly munching on a grashopper, asked me where I was from. "United States," I told him.

"Oh, welcome to Thailand!" he said. "Here, come sit with me, I'm waiting for my wife."

I've already dealt with enough scams in this town to be skeptical of most people who stop me on the street to chat. But this guy was friendly, and I felt like I needed to give him the benefit of the doubt.

We sat down on a park bench and I lit a cigarette. He asked me for one. He had never seen Camel cigarettes before (sadly, they're unavailable here).

He introduced himself as Na-Na (a nickname) and told me he was a professor of corporate law at the nearby university. We chatted for a few minutes during which he asked me about my job and why I don't have a girlfriend (the people here seem to think I'm gorgeous).

He told me about his family and his work, but he seemed vaguely uncomfortable about something.

"Maybe you come to my house for dinner?" he finally asked bashfully.

I wasn't about to turn down the opportunity to have dinner with a local.

On the tuk-tuk ride to his house (his wife had phoned to tell him she had headed home without him) he kept telling me that he was "very poor." He seemed to be telling me out of embarassment. Apparently he was concerned that I, the wealthy American, would find his humble Thai home offensively inadequate.

We arrived in an unfamiliar neighborhood on the opposite side of Bangkok. I stopped to buy some Thai beer as a gift (which he suggested)

"I have a cold, I no drink, but my wife like sometime," he told me.

He led me down a narrow, dirty pedestrian alley to an open area where several Thai families sat under corrugated metal overhangs - nursing babies, repairing motor-scooters, smoking cigarettes, talking and laughing.

"This my family," he told me. "And this my house."

The family consisted of his wife, two sons, daughter-in-law, grandchild, a giant yellow (yes, yellow) St. Bernard named Rambo and a multitude of cousins and neighbors.

The house was a single room with a couch, TV, and a bed in an enclave - all on the ground floor of a four-story shanty that opend up onto the alley. Na-Na showed me to the bathroom, a concrete closet with a hole in the floor with a bucket of water next to it. Noticing movement in the corner I flinched, thinking it was a giant cockroach, but it was merely a medium-sized lizard.

We drank the Leo beer and Na-Na's wife started a coal fire over which she proceeded to cook whole fish (they looked similar to perch) in a wire basket. She whipped together some seafood stew, rice, some kind of shellfish fritter and vegetables all served with a spicy/sour fermented fish paste, sweet dipping sauce and chili/vinegar sauce.

"You like beef?" Na-Na asked me.

"Sure, I like beef," I said, thinking he was curious.

Without hesitating he handed his 17-year-old son a wad of baht and sent him jogging to the market. 30 minutes later we had grilled beef with lime and a flank-steak salad with chilis and herbs.

It was an absolute feast. We sat around the dark, dank alley eating with our hands. One of the sons eventually produced a kind of pan-pipe instrument and I listened as the rest of the family sang songs and we took turns dancing around.

And in that moment I couldn't have been happier.

After dinner Na-Na took me inside to show me his family photo albums and the video of his son's TV appearance (he's a singer).

"Nobody know that this the house of movie star!" Na-Na gushed proudly. He gave me a short lesson in Thai pronunciation and made me promise to visit him when I come back to Bangkok.

"We poor, but we happy," Na-Na told me after we said goodnight to the family and he walked me to a taxi stand at the end of his street. "You see, we have family, and as long as nobody sick, we happy."

I was going to write more, but in the end I think that speaks for itself.

(Postscript: I have a handful of photos from my evening with Na-Na's family, and I will post them as soon as I find a computer with a USB port - Stay tuned).