Thanks for your replies guys, with this time zone difference you have all responded while we zzzzz-ed over on this side of the globe, so sorry for being slow with my reply.
The story is called Expat Brat (surprisingly). It is my memoir of 12 years expatting in Papua New Guinea (PNG), China and Thailand. Papua New Guinea is my first posting and this part is near the start of the book (page 30) and is talking about a date on my 4th day in the country.
Understand that PNG is extremely tribal and primitive. The people still live in grass huts, wear grass skirts and fish in dug-out-canoes. Already we’ve discussed arriving and seeing a women at the market dressed in body paint, pig husk through the nose and ass-grass (grass skirt), plus the locals painting the road-line-markings by hand (string tied around 4 nail heads to make a long rectangle, which they then hand paint within the string outline to make the white lines), the types of resumes you receive (wonderful skills like: can use stapler, telephone and scissors are highlighted) and a stuff-up at the local pie factory where the person who puts the meat filling in the pies failed to turn up – but everyone else did their jobs like normal so every pie in the country was without filling that day (true story BTW).
At the section we are talking about soaking-up-stories, I’m out on a date with a bloke who is explaining how he had to give a lecture to the locals on how to use a toilet (the villages saw a pretty white chair in a small room – not somewhere to take-a-dump). The date-bloke had been nervous at the start of the date and has fallen into telling local legend stories to keep the conversation flowing, and, being new, I can’t get enough of them.
Thanks a bunch for your help guys. After letting this story sit for four or more months I'm finally back at it and editting like crazy - and enjoying the process (shock... horror).
