Good old Samantha informed me that she was taking the trip to Southeast Asia anyway, without me. At first, I was simply stunned -- this was a girl who could hardly make it from bed to the coffee shop without a crisis. Then the awe turned to anger as I realized I would spend the next eight weeks disgustingly wondering where the hell she was and what crazy things she was experiencing that I wasn't.

I couldn't sleep. I felt unappreciated, disrespected and now, jealous -- I was going to miss out on all the fun of our trip. So in the middle of the night, the inevitable and semi-sinister solution came to me -- I too would travel solo to the same area. Hey, Thailand's as big as France -- I figured we could keep our distance.

When I arrived in sweaty, crowded, 110-degree Bangkok, I discovered that I wasn't to be taking this trip alone after all -- I was accompanied by the ghost of Samantha wherever I went. I could almost smell the damn girl at the magnificent Grand Palace, and there she was, lying next to me at Wat Pho as we experienced our first Thai massages. As that first wave of solo travel panic flooded through me (what the hell am I doing here, all by myself?), I carried on silent conversations with the ghost. When the frantic tuk-tuk driver almost tipped the three-wheeled beast en route to the Jim Thompson house museum, I squeezed her hand.

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E-mail abounds in Thailand. The typical "Noi's Internet Hut" charges the equivalent of $2 an hour. Samantha had sent me an e-mail describing her initial adventures. Though I had informed her of my own similar travel plans, I had pledged to myself not to e-mail her when I was in Thailand -- and not to plan any sort of meeting. If we saw each other, it would be destiny. Otherwise, it just wasn't meant to be.

I e-mailed her as soon as I got to Bangkok. "I'm on Khao San Road," I wrote (yes, that Khao San Road -- where Teva-clad youth from all points of the globe convene to buy tapes, drink beer and check their e-mail before catching a bus to Surat Thani or a plane to Ho Chi Minh). "Where are you?"

There was no immediate response. I met up with my friends Mikey and Jen, who were three weeks into a six-month trip through Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, India and Nepal. We went out drinking in steamy Patpong, Thailand's red-light district.

The pudgy, bored women on the stage of our bar of choice danced listlessly in ugly cotton underwear. Other women rubbed our shoulders and legs with about as much zeal as a Burger King employee assembling his 2,000th Whopper of the day. When Jen excused herself to go to the bathroom, Mikey leaned over to me.

"Man, I really envy you," he confided. "You're a hot young bachelor from San Francisco, ready to woo women the world over."

"Yeah, I guess so," I said. "But I'm kind of wrapped up in this Samantha thing at the moment."

"Forget her, man," Mikey responded, straight out of a million movies. "You've gotta make an effort not to meet women on the road. Besides, I have to live vicariously through you."

Next page | Bumping into Samantha in Bangkok