Things I've mistaken for other things...

Its been quite a while since we were in an English speaking country.  While SE Asia is WAY easier to navigate than, say, China we still stumble through conversations daily.  And when it comes to non-English menus or labels, fuggetit.  The Thai language looks like a continuous Henna tattoo and may as well be for its practical use to us.

Throughout our trip, though, we've happily delved in to the unknown.  Matching up Chinese characters from a phrasebook to a toilet sign so I didn't accidentally use the men's room, pantomiming the flapping wings of a chicken for a Mongolian nomad so as to avoid eating mutton, demonstrating the size and shape and corresponding facial expression of so many things that I like/use/eat/need, to varying effect.  And thus, strictly for laughs, I list for you my most spectacular errors.

We thought that both of last 2 tubes of toothpaste we bought were mint.  Perhaps spear, perhaps winto, we weren't picky.  The one from Japan was grapefruit flavored and the new tube from Cambodia tastes like salt and Lipton tea.

I bought a pastry in Shenyang, China that I thought had a sweet apple filling but was, infact, curried ground beef.

I chose a scoop of ice cream in Korea believing it was green tea flavored - it was actually melon.  And so gross.

There were probably about 15 meat-based dishes we ordered during our month in China thinking they were chicken or pork, based on photos.  They were all stir-fried tongue.  Ed did not go hungry those nights.


Craving potato chips at the beach, I cheaped out and bought a Thai brand that looked like sour cream & onion; actually nori seaweed flavored.  But tasted like dead fish.  With ridges.  Of the flavors that were listed in English and passed over: prawn and chicken stew, barbequed pork bun, and chili crab hotpot (they can get that on a chip!).

We ordered a fish and a pork dish at dinner one night in Mui Ne.  A slab of dry, herb crusted protein arrived and I concluded it was the pork.  It was tough and flavorless so we covered it in fish sauce and buried it in vermicelli.  Only when the bill arrived did we learn that the pork was left off and that the meat was, indeed, our fish entree.

In Seoul, I bought a pack of gum that I thought was spearmint but was green apple flavored.  It tasted like the apple-flouride flavor from childhood dental checkups.

If I had a dollar for every time I've mistaken red bean paste for chocolate, I could buy a truckload of red bean paste.  Which I'd have to throw away just like all the other not-actually-chocolate things I've chosen.  I could extrapolate that I should stop trying to eat chocolate.  But its almost Christmas and that would make Santa sad.

I'd like to say that I've made some special discoveries through my mistakes but mostly I was just startled.  And then confused.  And then, probably, wishing I could spit.  If only I could learn to love sweet red beans....