.......  A human being has to eat every day in order to live, but it took me about six months before I could eat proper Thai food with all spices. I tried very hard from the very beginning, but everytime I had something hot, I just could not eat it. It tasted awful, and after only one mouthful of some curry, my face was all red and I was sweating all over. Besides that I had never liked rice, you see. Now after many years here, I think Thai food with rice is the best food in the whole world!

      In Finland since my childhood I was taught always to eat everything on my plate and finish my drink too, "not to waste food". I had just come to Thailand, and I remember visiting a Thai family somewhere countryside, we were sitting outside the house, and the host gave me a glass of coconut milk (they had lots of coconut trees in their garden), I had never tasted it, and after taking just one sip, I did not like it at all, but I did not want to offend my host, so I drank the whole glass swallowing very fast, and then, to my horror, the host filled my glass again. I was desperate, but again emptied the glass, and the host filled my glass again (I wanted to throw up everytime I swallowed the liquid, but somehow managed to keep it inside). I was wishing in my mind that the host would leave the table, so I could pour the drink on the ground, but he just sat there, and I kept on drinking coconut milk! At last it was time to go home, and I had a chance to tell about my ordeal to some friends who had been living in Thailand for a long time, and they laughed and said that because I had been emptying the glass, my host thought that I really liked the drink and just could not stop drinking it.

      Well, I learned afterwards many tricks hiding some things that I could not eat under the rice, and in the countryside there were always dogs hovering around and under the table and they were very pleased if something - by accident of course - fell to the ground. By the way, now I like coconut milk very much.

LANGUAGE

.......  As I mentioned, I studied Thai in a language school in the beginning. The Thai language when spoken by Thais sounds like a beautiful soft music, whereas Finnish language is like firing a machine gun (some Thai friends have said to me that when they listen to Finnish people talking together, it sounds as if they were fighting!) Mastering the different tones of your wonderful language is still very hard for me, it took me more than one year to hear the high tone, like in the word "horse" (I thought that I only had to say it with a very high pitch and ended up sounding funny), but e.g. the word "dog" was quite easy, only that I used to move my head and even the whole body when saying it ("eat rice").

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