During my time in Thailand I put a lot of effort into learning the Thai language. I am not fluent but I can hold a pretty decent conversation with people.

In my first year the return on investment was immense. For each hour I was spending learning Thai I would get huge enjoyment from using what I learned in day to day life. However, the more I studied the more the enjoyment faded.

It was not a learning curve but more like a learning dip! After a few years I started to realize that there were tones to be mastered. In fact, I hadn’t been speaking Thai all these years – I was just speaking Thailish. It devastated me. I must have sounded like a complete prat.

I specifically remember a few occasions where Thai people just couldn’t understand what I was saying. I know I wasn’t speaking clearly but a little bit of thinking of their part would have helped!

First, there was the time when I brought my family to a restaurant. I had been telling them how I was learning Thai and was making great progress. I told them that I would order everything – no problems!

I started with ordering water. Kaw nam plao, noy krap. Silence. Kaw nam plao, noy krap. More silence. Kaw nam plao, noy krap. The waitress ran away only to be replaced by a similar mute dummy. Kaw nam plao, noy krap. Aray na? (what?).

Of course, this wasn’t impressing my family and was starting to infuriate me. How could they not understand that I was ordering water. It was just water. I had ordered it hundreds of times before without any problems.

I decided that I should try English – to see if they could place my unclear Thai with an English word. "Water"!

Suddenly there was life in her eyes. "Waser" she said gleefully. "What"? Two can play at this game! "Waser". I decided that it would be better to finish this conversation sooner rather than later - "Oh, you mean water"?

Now, if I can figure out water from waser surely they could have figured out naam from nam. I do know now that it should be pronounced with a high tone meaning that it is naaaaaaaam with the tone moving higher and higher.

Sure enough they all burst into laughter when they figured out that I had been trying to order water but that laughter only served to infuriate me even more. I appreciate now that Thais laugh in a awkward situations in order to difuse things but to an unaware farang this is just pure rude!

We ate at KFC that day!

Another time I was on my own. I was wandering around Rangsit which is the very north of Bangkok – on the outskirts of the suburbs. I wanted to get a caffeine fix and saw a small little café in a shopping centre. It wasn’t Starbucks but they had Tea and Coffee. Actually, that’s all they had! So this should be easy enough to order. Also considering the fact that coffee in Thai is pronounced as café I really thought it would be a zinch!

No such luck!

OK. This time I was really annoyed. Here is a shop that sells tea or coffee. That’s either cha or café in Thai. They don’t sound similar at all so when I order café (with the wrong tone) surely you can still figure out what I am ordering!). No chance!

She just had no idea what I was ordering. The more I said it the more she got flustered. That day I ended up with waser!

I have many more examples of the trials and tribulations of learning and conversing in Thai. I also realize that many Thais in the service industry (outside of the tourist belt) have little or no experience of dealing with farangs In fact many of them are intimidated by them and they become very shy. There have been times when people have just run away from me when I have ordered something – like I am a possessed ghost or something.

The other problem is that they don’t expect a farang to be speaking Thai and are actually trying to tune into English. Due to the fact that most farangs don’t speak Thai clearly they actually believe we are speaking English! So they wont find the word in their English vocabulary!

The more Thai you learn the more dangerous things become – especially if you still haven’t got to grips with the tones. A visit to Tesco resulted in an embarrassing but funny experience.

I was at the butcher counter and wanted to order some sliced ham. But I wanted to make sure that they would slice it very thin as I hate big slabs of ham. Phom ao ham song jin bang krap – or something to that equivalent which with the wrong tones meant I said " I have 2 very thin penises"!

After I repeated myself a few times and the girls had picked themselves off the floor I am happy to report that I went home with 2 very big slabs of ham. I wasn’t going to argue with them in the end!