At a Thai forum that I visited yesterday in the hope of gleaning some visa-related information (no luck), I chanced upon a few sub-threads that seemed full of commentary by disgruntled ex-pats and their ilk. I recognised the sentiment immediately, for having lived in Japan for three years, there are certain common elements to what one might call the disillusionment of the Westerner who chances to leave the homeland. Some are understandable, for the cultural and historical differences are deep and the sense of being the outsider never really fades completely. It is not unusual for the euphoria of being immersed in a new society to dim with the passing of time, only to be replaced, if one is not careful, with a nitpicking dissatisfaction. And so it was with the chorus of whingeing correspondents at this site.

One comment I found particularly astonishing came from an Australian pen (should I say keyboard?) that grandly announced that there was nothing special about Thailand and that Australian culture was as deep as Thai culture. By what metric this was measured I do not know, but I can say, it is profound bollocks. If I accept that the writer was including Aboriginal culture and the Western cultural tradition going back to the Ancient Greeks, then there is a case to be made. But this is not what he meant, for these traditions barely inform the lives of average Australians, whose cultural outlook hardly strays from tabloid TV and media, property prices, sport and, er, sadly that's about it. There is nothing wrong with having these interests per se, but there is surely something the matter if they constitute most of what there is.

Even a cursory look at Thai culture (or pretty much any Asian culture) shows a level of depth and sophistication, not to mention an intersection with long history, that makes the shallow Western roots of the Australian implantation look, well, even shallower.