It's yoghurt Jim, but not as we know it

Everything is different over here. Take my lunch for example: a roasted (not just roast) beef sandwich and a tamarind yoghurt.

I liked the idea of the tamarind yoghurt, and indeed, the tamarind portion of said product was very nice. But the yoghurt (the larger portion of the serving) was unlike any yoghurt product I had hitherto experienced.

It wasn't unpleasant, just watery. It kind of reminded me of the Junket mum used to give me - presumably as some sort of punishment - when I was a youngster. But tangier.

I guess, from a marketing point-of-view, "Tangy Tamarind Junket" just may not sell as well as "Tamarind Yoghurt", but I'm guessing it's an untested market.

The roasted beef sandwich was a lot more sandwich-like than the yoghurt was yoghurt-like, but the term "roasted" clearly referred to some sort of Thai roasting process that doesn't involve actually cooking the meat very much. Again - nothing nasty about it, just different.

Now to the language, because I know you're all wondering how I'm going learning Thai, and how I'm getting by while I'm in the process of learning Thai. Well, my Thai skills were summed up by a taxi driver last night: "nit noi" meaning I have "a little bit" of Thai (meaning bugger all).

At the moment, my confidence in speaking Thai is pretty low. I've got a couple of phrases down (hello, thank you, yes, no) and the numbers, but I'm not confident with my pronunciation, so I tend to mumble and nod, and hope they understand what I mean.

The hardest part is understanding someone else when they ask or tell me something. It takes my brain a little while to match the Thai to the English in my head. I'm still a baby at this, so it's like I'm still using my fingers to count - only I'm using wobbly bits of my brain to match Thai words to English.

Today was the hottest day I've had so far. So of course, I wore a thick long-sleeve shirt, and walked through the city for about an hour in the middle of the day. Derr. I needed a shower when I got home from work today.

On the happy side of things, I put a deposit on the cloud apartment today, and I move in on Wednesday! Yippee! So my address will be somewhere in Soi Nai Loet (also spelled Nai Lert, or Nailert - don't get me started).

Provided, of course, that I come up with the cash on Wednesday to take possession of said apartment. Apparently, using credit cards for payment of large sums of money is not common practice, so instead, one must carry three months worth of rent in cash.

I'm looking forward to having a Bangkok address by the end of this week. Thanks to all my fans who posted comments about which apartment would be better and gave me such encouragement. (I'm being sarcastic by the way).

D.