A month or so ago, girl fell off a highrise in Midtown Manhattan. Apparently she fell while drunkenly attempting to take a photo from a window ledge. A sad but objectively unremarkable story, I nonetheless found myself thinking about it much longer than I usually do when I’m making my daily round through local and foreign media sources. There were a few points of interest: she was the daughter of the US Ambassador to Thailand; she was young and attractive, and at the time of her death she was two weeks from starting her freshman year at Parson’s.

I was reading through the thaivisa.com forum, and some users were posting their comments. One poster wondered whether her upbringing, as an expat child in Bangkok, where partying is the rule, not the exception, may have primed her for making poor decisions - including her last, most fatal one.

At the time I was thinking that was unfair speculation, and whether or not that that was true in this case, it is an interesting theory to consider. I have this idea to write a story that will touch on this topic, if I can find the time. I know expat families have it rough in general, but from what I’ve seen, read, and heard, Thailand is especially difficult. Divorces are frequent, often spurred by philandering husbands. There are a certain subset of Thai women who see older farang men as an opportunity (and vice versa). But what would this do to a daughter? A son?