AHhhhh....that brings back memories Barrie of my time in the caribbean, some really tasty dishes out there as there are in Thailand of course. One thing that you have in your favour over me of course is the language barrier. I try my best to speak a bit of Thai here and there but it`s such a very difficult language to learn. Fortunately my wife can speak English reasonably well so it`s not really a problem. I decided finally to more or less give up trying to speak Thai when I attempted to impress and say to my mother in law in Thai "Good morning, how are you today mother" . In fact what I actually said to her was " Good morning, how are you, you old dog!" Fortunately, she saw the funny side of it and laughed her head off, but my wife was not quite so happy with me due to the disrespect that I had just shown to her mother!
