Havin stepped out of the taxi and felt his shoe land in something mushy. Looking down, he saw that he'd stepped onto a fallen cashew fruit. An all too familiar odour rose up to greet him. It was the last week in March. The temperatures were up in the higher 90s F, and the wind off the coast of Phuket was undecided between a fresh northeasterly and a tepid westerly.

Three years ago, with the same bittersweet odour of crushed cashew fruits in the air, he'd dropped by a spa in Kata and asked if they had someone to deal with his recurring back problem. The receptionist led him to a small office to her right. Inside was a lady in her mid-30s reading a tattered paperback English novel.His curiosity was piqued, so he sat and waited until his would-be masseuse flipped shut the last page of the chapter, then rose to greet him.

Gavin looked up at a neat lady with an off-white heavy cotton Chinese shirt, long black hair tied up in a tight bun, elegant high cheekbones betraying her Northern Thai origins, and a knowing twinkle in her eyes. She introduced herself as Thong Waan - "Sweet Gold". She was, she explained, so-named by a father enamoured, in the manner of most Chinese immigrants to Thailand, of all things golden. Originally from Chiang Mai, she'd worked for the last 10 years on Phuket. Not much given to change, and seeing that Phuket was developing all around her, she was going home soon. "Too much construction," she said, as she began massaging oil into Gavin's back.

On reflection that night, gavin thought that he'd not only had the best massage he'd experienced in his entire 45 years, but that he'd met someone rather special. He ran through the whole afternoon in his memory, looking for tell-tale negative signs that would explain why such an extraordinarily attractive woman, at her age, would find herself still single. He found none, and determined to go back to check on his normally sound discernment.

The next day, Gavin found Thong Waan reading a Newsweek article. She promptly started asking Gavin exactly why Mr Bush should get away with accusing Saddam of disobeying the UN while himself ignoring UN mandates. Gavin, an apolitical creature at the best of times, was flustered. Instead of answering or committing himself, he played for time and—wonder of wonders—actually blurted out an dinner invitation for that evening: "So as I can explain the situation more fully." Thong Waan accepted with a curt nod, simply allowing herself to be persuaded to do what she wanted to do in the first place.

Gavin was exactly 37 minutes and 20 seconds early for the date. He sat down and ordered a vodka and lime. At the adjacent table, a Thai lady gushed over her tall, sun-chewed date: "I like you Australian men so much better than German men. So much kinder." The man, dressed in shorts and a hastily-bought, bogus Lacoste T-shirt, shifted uncomfortably in his chair and muttered, "Zank you. Velly kind off you."

As she'd promised, Thong Waan arrived on time and sat down in a redolence of aromatherapy oil. After ordering a tom yam gung and steamed rice, she asked: "Well, do you have an answer?"

Gavin was quick to seize the opportunity, and expounded on North American governmental policy shifts for longer than a freight train takes to pass a Canadian road crossing. At the end he said: "Understand?" And she did. She understood that she'd been invited out by someone who knew precisely nothing about politics, but who was more than somewhat interested in her company.

They courted gracefully for almost three months until mutual agreement dictated that "a co-habitation was in order", as Thong Waan gently put it.

And it seemed the perfect match. But it was only after they'd both moved into a one-bedroom house in Kamala that cross-cultural misunderstandings began to appear. Gavin, twice-married, was the self-confessed cause of both of his marital rifts. He was addicted to bickering and could see no harm in what he saw as a "good discussion". Thong Waan, even though she was a formidable character outside the house, was essentially a typical Thai lady who couldn't and didn't countenance female dissent in a relationship. So she acquiesced in all things domestic, and it drove Gavin mad with despair. In the meantime, Thong Waan, as she played out her role as the submissive and dutiful wife, didn't so much as notice a single thing awry.

When, after a year together, Gavin was called back to Scotland on business, he took the coward's way out, simply staying there and sending a short letter of apology to Thong Waan saying, "I don't think things will work out between us".

She either never replied or the letter was lost in the mail.

After a while, Gavin slowly faced up to what was revealing itself as one of the biggest mistakes he'd ever made in his life. The more so because Thong Waan had said that she would go back to Chiang Mai, and that he was sure that he would never find her again.

And so, after two long years of regret, he found himself once again in Kata, in the very place he'd met one of the most extraordinary women of his life. Taking a paper tissue and wiping the cashew fruit off the sole of his shoe, he stepped inside the bungalow and unpacked.

The next morning, as he drove his rented jeep to the ATM in downtown Kata, he noticed a sign saying "T.W. Massage. English, Chinese & Thai Spoken", right where Thong Waan's old employer had been. His head in a spin, he parked and walked back to the shophouse to peer inside.

Thong Waan recognized him immediately. She rose to greet him, but there was something in her manner that made Gavin freeze. Was it the glint of gold on her left hand, or the sudden icy blast from the newly installed air-conditioner that warned him things would never be the same again between them? Thong Waan was the soul of cordiality as she introduced her husband, a Chinese-Thai gentleman wearing a fake Rolex.

Gavin was crushed. He'd already admitted emotional defeat in faraway Scotland. To have his face rubbed in it here on Phuket was too much. He excused himself and left as quickly as he could.

It was a sad Scotsman who boarded an early flight back to Aberdeen, via Vienna, later that week. It was an even sadder Thong Waan that boarded the bus back to Chiang Mai, via Bangkok three weeks later, having said goodbye to her "husband" —in fact her boss, who'd suggested that they should pose as a married couple to improve business. As usual, Thong Waan had acquiesced, never knowing that Gavin would take her at face value when he walked in. And out. She quit the next day.

Thai people use an expression: som naam na, which roughly translates as "it serves you right". This expression usually describes perfect idiots - thieves and criminals who muck things up, leading to their downfall or arrest. These stories are relished and reprinted weekly by the local gutter press in a frenzy of schadenfreude. But Thong Waan never thought of Gavin as a som naam na victim. She simply couldn't understand his attitude, and accepted that she wasn't the woman for him. And she did this with as much grace as she showed each and every one of her customers in the massage parlour.

Nowadays Thong Waan is working as a receptionist in downtown Chiang Mai. She's come to realize that Chiang Mai, like Phuket, has changed, whether she likes it or not. Gavin is retired and plays a lot of golf. He thinks about how many kids she's had with her fancy Chinese-Thai guy with the fake Rolex. Meanwhile, the Chinese-Thai guy with the fake Rolex is wondering when, if ever, he'll find someone like Thong Waan again. And the cashew fruits still smell bittersweet, every March, in Kata.