Most tourists have tales of getting ripped-off somewhere in the course of their travels.
I haven't been immune to deceit, overcharging, and outright theft here in Thailand but, for every time it's happened, I've also been the recipient of extraordinary acts of kindness.

Patong Beach is as crass as it gets in the high season. Sultry nights when the streets are jammed with hawkers, hookers and heist artists, you can almost smell the scams in the air. But here, of all places, I've also experienced some of the kindest acts I've ever known.

A few years ago I was the victim of a bus robbery. It was a simple drug mugging during an all-night bus trip from Bangkok to Phuket. Sedatives slipped into the courtesy Cokes served by our petite VIP hostess put us all into a deep sleep. None of us realized that our wallets had been cleaned out till we were ushered off the bus next morning. I was one of the few to still have camera, passport and enough change in my pocket to get me to Patong.

The tuk tuk driver who hustled me away from the bus was anxious to get me to a hotel where he could collect his commission, a bonus worth considerably more than the cab fare. I still had my credit card, so I was by no means destitute, but I was also in a foul mood and wanted nothing to do with any further scheming by a tuk tuk tout. "Just drop me off anywhere along the beach," I told the driver, as we came in sight of the broad sweep of Patong Bay. I needed a healthy dose of sun and the soothing sound of waves.

"No, no! Must go hotel first!" the driver insisted. Over his increasingly frantic protests, I paid my fare, suffered the spate of Thai insults, and walked to the water's edge to plop myself down on the sand.

"You, you! Rent beach chair, one day, 100 baht," was the next demanding voice I heard.

"I no money," I replied to the chair concession boy, who walked away muttering something about another tight-fisted budget backpacker.

In no mood, now, to respond positively to anyone, I saw a middle-aged Thai woman approaching me. Sweating profusely beneath her wide-brimmed straw hat, she struggled down the beach lugging two large ice coolers and chanting her mantra: "Soft drink, beer, watermelon, mango," to every sun-worshiping foreigner she passed. Nobody was buying.

"You thirsty? Want fruit? Drink?" she asked as she put down her load with an exhausted sigh.

"I'd love a drink," I responded. "But I no money."

"My pen rai," she whispered conspiratorially. "No problem. Pay me next time."

"Maybe problem," I protested, as she kept piling up the fresh fruit and drinks beside me. "Maybe I not see you again. Maybe no next time."

"When you money, you pay me, okay?" she said.

I watched her disappear down the long curve of the bay packed with thousands of tourists. How could she ever possibly find me again I wondered, even if I should return to this beach? The mountain of freshly sliced mango, watermelon and the cold beer she left me with must have constituted a big part of any profit she could have hoped to realize that day.

It took me repeated trips to the beach over the course of several months before I saw the woman again. She remembered me, and seemed pleasantly surprised when I paid her handsomely for her earlier generosity.

"You jai dee mahk mahk!" she said. But it was her, of course, who had the "very good heart."

That woman's act of kindness has stayed with me over the years. It remains more vivid in my mind than the loss of three cameras, two passports and considerable cash over the course of my visits to Thailand. Her generosity that morning did not right the wrong I'd experienced on the bus the night before, but it did put life back in balance for me and, through a simple act of kindness, restored my faith in humanity.

Much more recently, Patong Beach surprised me again with another extraordinarily generous act, a happy accident in the most unlikely of places. My briefcase had popped a rivet and stripped a screw in the handle, making it awkward to tote around tucked under one arm. "Cannot fix, must buy new," was the only response I got from every leather repair shop I took it to. I was on my way to Robinson Department Store, finally, to replace the thing, when I happened to pass a Patong motorcycle shop. The tough black-leather look of the place, with its Nazi bike helmets, skull-and-cross-bone insignias and Hell's Angels paraphernalia wasn't exactly my normal turf. But what the hell, I thought.

"Can you fix this thing?" I asked the proprietor, a huge bearded Thai man with tattoos dressed in nothing but leather pants. He glared up from his morning meal as though he were planning to devour me next. Without a word he wiped his face with the back of his hand, left his grub to the flies, and crossed the room to inspect my briefcase.

After 30 minutes of tinkering, the bike-shop owner put down the briefcase, signaled me to stay put, fired up his chopper and roared off in a cloud of dust. He returned 20 minutes later with a handful of hardware. He went to work in earnest, now, perspiring freely as he wrestled with that case for nearly an hour in the rising heat of the day. Satisfied at last that the briefcase was now stronger than it had been in to start with, the guy went back to finish his by-now stale meal.

Knowing this was going to cost me dearly, I opened my wallet wide. "Taow rai?" I asked. "How much?" But the shop owner just shook his head. "My pen rai - no problem" was all he said.

I'd taken nearly two hours of the man's time, disturbed his meal, put him out of personal pocket money for the hardware, but still he refused to take as much as a single baht for his labour.

Ever since, when I encounter foreigners ranting about all the times they've been ripped off in Thailand, I tell my own favourite stories.

Thank you, good people. Because I can never pay you back, you have put the onus on me to pay it forward.