I HAD been living in Bangkok for a year, when I met an English man who had only recently moved to Thailand. He introduced me to his lovely Thai girlfriend, and then told me they had met at the airport, in the arrivals hall, when he first stepped off the plane.

I was 21 and had been single for over a year, without a single speck of romance on the horizon, and here was a guy who found love as he collected his luggage. It felt pretty typical - the average western man probably spends a total of 3.5 minutes without romance or some sort of love interest in Thailand. Women can spend years.

I am sure there are lots of lovely Thai men out there also looking for western women to date. It is just that I never seem to meet them?

I have often mused about starting a show on Thai television along the lines of the immensely popular Australian TV show ?The Farmer Wants a Wife?. It?s a show about men living in the outback who have little chance of ever finding a nice lady, so they bring in lots of single women from the city and then try and set them up.

My show would be ?The Farang Wants a Husband? and I would be introduced to lots of lovely Thai men who would try to woo me.

I did date a Thai man for six months in Bangkok, but the relationship was pretty hard ? he sent me round the bend completely as he had never left Thailand and did not speak English very well. It was only after he moved to England on a scholarship and we got back together that we understood our huge cultural differences and became good friends.

For a start, he admitted that he did not take the relationship seriously in Bangkok because he had met me in a bar by myself (obvious bad girl). He also thought I was an ?easy girl? because I had a condom in my purse!

Basically, he believed that a girl should sit at home alone and wait for a man to come along and find her. The fact that it is logistically impossible to meet people while sitting at home alone did not get in the way of this belief.

There ARE good Thai men out there, but for the time being I am pretty happy making friends and working to improve my Thai language skills ? who knows, maybe Mr Right is just around the corner or at Phuket International Airport?s luggage carousel.