?Wheh ah you frahm?? the grinning Thai mountain man asks, as he continues tending to his rice paddy in the humid fly-laden air.

?Bermuda,? I say. His eyes glaze over as I?ve just spoken to him in some cryptic alien code. After a few seconds of silence they light up. ?Bermuda ... Triangle?? he asks. I nod reluctantly, unwillingly cementing this man?s idea that my home is nothing more than a place where planes crash and ships sink.

In fact, Bermuda is only one point of the mythical isosceles, the others being San Juan, Puerto Rico and Miami, Florida. And the fault really lies with the people who popularised the myth, the bunch of capitalising storytellers who decided to let their imaginations run rampant on paper.

It seems that wherever Bermudians go, the Bermuda Triangle is the fuzzy picture that pops into people?s heads when they hear the name of the Island, far ahead of sunny weather, pink beaches, friendly people or even shorts and onions.

My guess is that few people here really understand what the fuss is about, or how an entire industry was created to feed off the idea.

The man who exemplified that was Charles Berlitz, who died last month at the age of 90. His book, ?Bermuda Triangle?, was a sci-fi conspiracy theory thesis which sold more than five million copies in hardback. The disappearance of an entire squadron of TBM Avengers in 1945 shortly after take-off, as well as the traceless sinkings of the USS and were attributed to malevolent aliens, who were supposedly using the area as a kidnapping ground.

That was one of his theories anyway. Other ones included the possibility of a magnetic vortex through which a craft and its occupants could slip into different dimensions.

Or maybe, Berlitz postulated, the triangle was the result of man-made power complexes on the seabed left by an ancient civilisation.

Such speculation, as well as innumerable documentaries, films and articles (like this one I suppose) has led to the frenzied popularisation of the myth. One website search on Google.com brought up 155,000 hits for Bermuda Triangle.

But ships sink and planes crash, the sceptic argues. These things happen. Meanwhile, one faithful website points out that in the last decade more than 30 aircraft have disappeared in the area, in contrast to the mere handful that has been lost off the New England coast. Why so many more in this stretch of Sargasso Sea?

A huge number of scientific theories have been put forward, none of which rely on aliens or Atlantis to give them credence. A recent one theorised that the disasters were caused by the large methane bubbles rising unexpectedly from the sea floor and causing large waves.

According to Dr. Tony Knap, director of the Bermuda Biological Station for Research, the theory is ?highly speculative? because other events would be necessary in order for the gas to become unstable and also that the North Atlantic region was not especially known for its production of the smelly substance.

In any case, sceptics of supernatural myth are not hard to find. The United States Coast Guard is one of them.

The US Navy Historical Centre website points out that the majority of disappearances should really be attributed to the area?s ?unique environmental features?. The area is one of the two places on earth where a magnetic compass points towards true north, where normally it points towards magnetic north.

This sort of compass variation puts a ship or plane wildly off course.

Another factor, the Coast Guard says, is the Gulf Stream, the turbulence of which can make traces of crashes or sinkings disappear very quickly. Also, it points to the unpredictability of the Caribbean-Atlantic weather pattern.

Whatever the cause, it seems that lobbying the United States Government for the triangle name to be changed would be pointless, since the US Board of Geographic Names does not even recognise Bermuda Triangle as an official name or keep a file on the area. It seems this place is doomed to be known throughout the world as the place where people get lost. Not very encouraging for tourism is it?