Believe it or not, as much as I love this place, I’m human. And culture shock still plays a large role in my life. A huge part of this is how much I’ve immersed myself in the culture. Most people I’ve seen here live in little America, confining themselves to the tourist pockets, going golfing with their buddies, and spending the better part of their lives on a bar stool with English-speaking bargirls at their side.

For me, it’s different. The only white face in a 12 story building, I cling to the outskirts of even a bigger city like Chiang Mai. I can go months sometimes without seeing a Westerner, and all my friends are local Thais. So I’m not usually the one to complain about the comforts of home or things not being exactly how they were back when, but I have my moments.

Here are 4 that especially get on my nerves.

1. Internet Connection

Well, like I said, whining about not having the comforts isn’t really my style. I don’t even have a TV, and that’s exactly how I want it. But I do work online, and my business takes up a lot of my time—a huge part of that is that I can never rely on the internet. It’s not like that everywhere in Thailand, but if you venture too far from the heart of town, it does become an issue.

And it amazes me how it can go off and be down for days without someone doing much about it. I’ll go down to see if I can get a time estimate and there’s the technician sleeping in a chair in front of his computer—in the middle of the daytime….

2. The Western Reputation

This one is probably bothers me the most. People make a lot of assumptions about you if you’re a white male living in Thailand. You’ve must be rich. You must have lots of girlfriends. You must run around with bar girls. Never mind the fact that I’ve met very few Thai men who have qualms with paying for women—something that goes against my very moral fiber—and keep multiple girlfriends on the side.

Especially if you have a decent handle on their language, Thais will assume the worst about you, and most that I’ve met except for the most educated cannot fathom why someone would bother spending time in their country or making an effort to learn their language, unless there is something they are not telling. Even family and friends you talk to back home assume you must be up to something. And I won’t pretend I’m a 24/7 saint in the Land of Smiles—hey, I never was anywhere—but I’m certainly no sexpat.

3. Never Being Serious

I talked in my last article about how much I love sanuk and jai yen. But being so far integrated into the culture, there are definitely times where it frustrates me that I cannot show my feelings or opinions really ever. My friends aren’t really into intellectual conversation.

And sometimes you want to just tell how something bothers you, but it’s not cool to do that, even if it has nothing to do with them. Get in a serious conversation at a party or get-together, and someone will look at you and the person talking and tell you to stop, even if it’s not serous in a bad way.

“Not serious,” they’ll say. They don’t mean to stop being grumpy or to stop being argumentative—they mean don’t have an intellectual conversation. Just be trivial. Just joke around and stop talking about something of value. Drives me nuts.

4. Hiding Your Feelings

On the same token, as much as I love the lack of confrontation sometimes I want to go downstairs and just stress to the internet guy how I really need him to get up and fix the internet because, after all, I’m paying for it, and he’s causing me to lose hundreds of dollars in a matter of hours. But I can’t. It’s not that I would do it in a bad way, but criticism is unwelcome and taken personally in this country, and you just have to practice patience. Jai yen, indeed.

Well, I won’t pretend I never get irritated by anything else, but when it comes down to it, this isn’t my country, and I’m not going to be a whiner. It’s not my style. I just wanted to offer a balance in perspective after my last article, and as you can see, it’s often the things I love that are the same things that irritate me. I’m sure it’s the same for those who come to my country.

In any event, the overall experience is nothing short of amazing, and every day is a day to evolve and become something more.

More patient, most of all, I suppose.