Food stuff

I think that when you live in any foreign country, there are food stuffs you will always miss and things you will continue to need.  Someone Mr John knows here went to England on a two week holiday and made sure there were noodles in her suitcase.  Just one example.  Anyway, we have found some items through trial and error that I thought might help any westerner settling here in Thailand.

Mr John is a total teapot - by that I mean he could not survive without his cups of tea.  In fact, I've only ever come across one friend (Podge) who rivals him in the tea drinking stakes.  I think it's something he acquired through spending so much time at his Nan's who always had a pot of tea on the go.  Whilst you can get teabags here, we've found none to rival the tea he is used to in England and so these are "imported" either by us or friends. 

A lot of consumables here are tinged with sugar.  Things such as mayonnaise, tomato sauce, milk even bread have an oddly sweet taste.  It's taken us some time to pin down items that translate well to a western palate and here are some of them. 

Being Australian, there's quite a lot of products here that I can identify with and that really helps.  If you've never heard of, or tried, Tim Tams go seek them out.  They're made by Arnott's and you can pretty much trust this brand for any biscuit / snack goods. 

Of course you can also get imported goods too and these are easily identified by the "additional" sticky label written in Thai.  We found this by chance at Tesco. It had been put on a random shelf so we have no idea where to get another one.

And finally, we all need a little luxury and this is ours.  We are lucky enough to get these included in care parcels from friends abroad which are coveted and rationed out like you wouldn't believe.  Of course here, we have to keep them in the fridge.  The good news is that Starbucks can be found in Bangkok (and we could get them there) but it is an eight hour round trip and they cost about 20 evening meals. Best keep fingers crossed for the care parcels then!