My grandfather used to say ‘Nothing stranger than people’ – it was kind of a whimsical comment when he said it, but if you ponder it a bit it is true on so many levels.

Coming to an international destination like Thailand and spending some time just watching people on the beach provides such a wide view of various people and cultures, and can provide hours of entertainment.  I’m sure we provide some chuckle value to others, and certainly American tourists have lots of their own flaws in the international travel arena – like talking louder and slower to people that don’t speak English, in the hopes that that may help them understand.

I have to give some of these people at the beach full credit for being bold enough to do and wear the things they do, but it really ends there with the notion of of the credit.  There should be some sort of law or restriction about who can wear what out in public – that goes for both men and ladies, and the rule needs to include a scale that changes with age.  I have seen things on the beach that brought a smile to my face, and things that made me want to rinse my eyes with bleach.

Mrs. Columbus and I went down to the beach last night to watch the sunset and had to watch some girl probably in her late 20s of some sort of eastern European heritage prance in the waves.  This in itself is not noteworthy as there are 100s of people at the beach doing the same.  What made this like a train wreck that you could not look away from, was that her and her choice of bikini was really like 5 pounds of Jello stuffed into a 3 pound bag.  In addition to the garment being waaaay too small, the bottom bit was somehow loose, so every time she frolicked in the waves, said garment moved farther down her backside – and I had to wonder if perhaps she was a plumber in her home country.

Fortunately for us the train wreck moved on, and we were still able to enjoy our sunset, but it was just one more experience of the sort of things you can see when people are being – well, people.