It's interesting when for a brief moment a conversation can transport you back in time and leaves you thinking about a time past and of the way things must have been.

I was sitting in an outdoor restaurant across the road from the Nong Khai train station in the North East of Thailand waiting for the train to take me back to Bangkok after crossing into Lao the day before to renew my Thai visa.

Cheekily an old Thai girl asked me if I was liking the fried rice or “Kao pad moo” that I was devouring, she asked the question in very good English so I had to ask a couple of questions back because in this corner of Thailand not many Thai’s speak English well enough to have a conversation.

She was happy to answer and with a little knowing look she said she use to work in Patong, Phuket during the Vietnam war. It was there that she meet an African American GI. They married and had 5 kids, unfortunately the madness of war took his life, he was killed in Vietnam at the young age of 39.

Even with the ravages of time I could see in her attitude she was one of the good girls of her time.

She had never remarried and her devotion to Buddhism had kept her going, she still has that cheeky smile that must have disarmed many farang (westerner) all those years ago.