Avemario, Gordon's internet handle, is now 69 as at Jan 2012,male,hence the Mario,Aussie,living in Aussie, and working fulltime because he is the single parent of a couple of attitude ridden teenagers (been there?)
To get peace of mind and relaxation, he travels in his work holidays to Thailand every six months, having fallen in love with the place some four years earlier. He travels usually with an overseas emailer, of a similar but not too much younger age - recently either Thai or African female.
He decided to learn the language after the first visit, and to his surprise, it stuck!
He can speak, read and write it (albeit slowly, and will never be fluent due to his age), but it helps him to learn more about and understand the place, and therefore to be in a position to be able to help you generally younger others to get to know the place better.
He is not a "Western Tourist" type of person, but travels on local transport, avoids guided tours unless there is no other way, but stays generally in local aircon hotels at about $13 to $35 a night rather than backpacker hostels. Still he meets and travels with plenty of backpackers with whoever he happens to be travelling at the time,and they do not appear to object to his age, more so when he shows them how to get around and where to sleep and eat, as he also knows where to ask about backpacker accommodation.
To put it straight - I want to repay the favours so many people did for me when I travelled all around Europe in 1970, and this is one way I can do it.
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