Making Aussie breakfast in a Thai kitchen

Step 1 - preparation the day before

As you haven't yet been able to get a good supply of drinking water, boil the tap water rapidly for at least 10 minutes in your wok or saucepan. Allow this to cool, and fill random bottles and jugs to store in the fridge.

Step 2

As you don't have a kettle, pour some of the prepared drinking water into a cup, and microwave this cup on high for about 2 minutes. Test water temperature with finger, and either curse loudly, or return the cup to the microwave until the water is hot enough.

Step 3

Allow tea to steep, though because cup is quite small, it will reach desired strength quite quickly, so set tea bag aside to use again in your next cup of tea (mum and dad, I'll never laugh at you re-using your teabags again!).

Step 4

Add milk and sugar to taste. Drink while preparing toast.

Step 5

Look at your crockery and cutlery collection - realise that Thai people don't use knives with their meals, so you don't actually have a knife anywhere in the apartment.

Step 6

Take your gourmet muesli loaf, and tear it into desired-size chunks.

Step 7

Remember that you got a small wooden knife complimentary with your bottle of jam, so attempt to use that to "slice" the loaf.

Step 8

Place on rack thing in microwave convection oven, and set to grill mode, marked as "ย่าง" on the microwave. You know this because of the red heaty thing icon, not because you can read Thai.

Step 9

Pull out what would be described in any five-star restaurant as "rustic hand-torn fruit toast", lavish with freshly opened fruit conserve, and eat with your, by now cold, tea.

Aroi!

D.