So is anyone planning a trip to Thailand any time soon? If so, I can hook you up with about 13,000 baht . It's the proceeds from another ebay selling experience gone wrong, and I'll tell the story here because it fits within the blog's theme. I guess I just assumed I could overcome all barriers online.

When my MacBook died, I decided to see what I could get for it. The monitor worked great, and the keyboard wasn't missing any keys. I found a good market online, and two bidders got into a bidding war. In the end, it sold for more than I hoped, but there was one catch. The winning bidder was in Thailand.

In my listing I said no international shipping, but ebay didn't stop him from bidding, and I couldn't find any way to legally welch. He also agreed to pay international shipping, and frankly, helepd me make a little bit more money.

The problem was the language barrier. I e-mailed him with directions on how to pay. He e-mailed me back with nonsense. Finally, I understood from his messages he was going to use PaysBuy , the Thai equivalent of PayPal. PayPal's a great service, even if they charge a little too much, so I assumed PaysBuy would be the same, and for the most part, it is. I can use it to buy all kinds of great merchandise. I just can't transfer the money there to my American account.

Frankly, that's my fault. I just assumed too much about how easy it was to transfer money in this digital age. I made the ugly American assumption that everyone online speaks English.

So as great as the Internet is, and how closely it can bring us together, it's not a magic bullet. We still need to complete some transactions face to face, and that's how it always will and should be.

So I think I'm going to buy an overpriced iPod and pay too much to have it shipped to me from Thailand, and in the end, I think I'll finish ahead. I'll trade a broken Macbook for an overpriced iPod any day. I just could have used the cash to fix my deck.

UPDATE (4/14/09): Getting Thai merchants to ship to the States is a bit harder than I thought. Looks like I'm going to be buying a lot of Thai books and music because that's all they'll ship. D'oh!