Beware self-proclaimed experts of other cultures

“When any Westerner tells you that he knows the East like a book and pretends to be an authority, beware, for he is lying. Even the Westerners who stay for years rarely penetrate below a certain class in the East. They meet the Westernized, the cultured, and the rich — and always behind this shallow facade are the numberless Siamese they cannot begin to comprehend, who are Thailand.”
–Carol Hollinger, Mai Pen Rai (1965)