Ah, yes, life under Asia's pleasure domes, where pagodas, tropical beaches and mountain villages seduce foreigners and help numb the surrounding chaos of poverty, natural disasters and an occasional coup d'etat.

Even though Bangkok is infiltrated by technology and multinationals, this riverside capital invites you to fall in love and enjoy the city's Blade Runner superstructure ambiance.

Don't worry that it often appears as if some of the props are held up simply by bamboo or gold, with a frosting of air-conditioning and some loud rock-and-roll.

Romance attracts many of us to this part of the world, whether it's the romantic, atticlike atmosphere of post-colonial French Indochina to the east of Thailand, or ex-British colonial Burma to the west.

And, of course, within all of us is an incurable romantic seeking a gorgeous mate for all sorts of heart-throbbing reasons.

No point denying it. Many of the expat men and women who come to Thailand are looking for love in all the warm places.

When I co-authored a nonfiction book titled, "Hello My Big Big Honey!" Love Letters to Bangkok Bar Girls and Their Revealing Interviews, I plunged into a world where coin-operated kisses sometimes gave way to true love in a cheap, cool hotel.

AIDS continues to be a genuine epidemic here, and the flesh trade can be vicious and ugly. But that doesn't stop the sex industry from happening.

And though many males and females rent prostitutes in Southeast Asia for decadent, robotic misadventures, some actually fall in love with their paid temporary helper.

When Thai bar girls told their broken English tales, and displayed letters they received from now-faraway foreign men, it soon became obvious that they had the answer to the question we all wonder about.

Even a BBC television crew came over and asked me the question over a recent dinner: Why do foreigners fall in love with Thais?

I'm lucky to be in love with a Thai girl who works at a nearby bank, but romance and lust aren't the only attractions for expats here.

For us writers, who love people but who also love words, Bangkok offers some of the best imagery and -- the ultimate for me -- bizarre quotes.

For example, when I step into one of the many time-warp bars here, I'm always amazed that not only is the Vietnam War still being fought, but that the dialogue is better than the movies.

Beer-clutching Americans will interrogate each other about how many people they killed in Vietnam and why soldiers often perish in squalid, painful ways.

Then the chatter shifts to the delights of Bangkok and who is dating whom, either for cash or purely in an emotional crush.

I've been working as a foreign correspondent and photojournalist in Asia for 22 years, including ten based in India, mostly for The Washington Times, but other publications as well.

To survive out here amid the seething jungles and the endless beating of drums -- which, I should add, actually back up electric guitars -- can be grueling, especially when some horrific news erupts in an obscure place of devastation and killing.

I've often been in the midst of an urgent news story, but found it almost impossible to file copy back to newspapers overseas.

Though cyberspace touches electronic vortexes scattered across Asia, there are lots of places where plastic dishes to eat food on are the only dishes around.

Worse, I come from San Francisco, which is the most gorgeous city on earth.

But fortunately, after living in several of Asia's vivid cities and mountainous zones, I can become more homesick for the steep hills around Kabul or Lhasa than the diagonal of Lower and Upper Haight.

And there are so many backpackers now in Asia that we have foreign ghettos to visit, which look like urban lanes carved out of a permanent Glastonbury or Burning Man, albeit less pyrotechnic and more tie-die bazaar.

All in all, it's the incredibly dramatic, international news stories which attracted me in the beginning, even before I met the love of my life.

It's also what keeps me here, hoping to find the heart in all those words.