just had my first fanta. i wondered why fanta is so popular here, with fanta being much easier to find than any other soft drink. a brief perusal of the ol wikipedia shed some light on things:
"As common in the south east part of Asia, the sugar content of these flavours are exceptionally much higher than in the rest of the world, giving the drinks a quite different taste compared to similar flavours around the rest of the world. Red Fanta has been officially endorsed by the King of Thailand as one of his preferred drinks. Consequently, glasses and open bottles of red Fanta are often seen as offerings on the small Buddhist altars displayed by every Thai home and shop."

it was very green, and it's called nam quiew which further according to wiki translates as "green water" and is cream soda flavoured (although according to my face no it isn't). the first gulp left a miserable aftertaste, but subsequent gulps convinced me that the stuff was actually pretty tasty (ie. sugary as fuck).

i drink so much liquid here it's sort of shocking. i didn't train today (sunday) and i put back at least 4L of water, as well as the aforementioned fanta, a mango smoothie, probably about a litre of milk, and a gatorade.

oh ! gatorade here comes in only 500mL bottles and only in two flavours: lemon lime, and grape. no orange, no fruit punch, no mosh, no core, no joke. i offered oron a drink of my gatorade when he was looking at it particularly longingly one day, and he took that to mean that all future gatorade concerns belong to him and he slaps me on the shoulder and shouts "NO !" when i drink more than him. also if i don't produce the gatorade in a timely fashion, he will happily and shamelessly root through my bag insisting "yellow !" the entire time (responding to me saying, "it's in there." with both demands of "yellow !" and follow-up queries of "...yellow ?") until he finds it. one day i made the mistake of bringing a grape gatorade and he was positively inconsolable. i think i deeply tested the thai patience that day.

"yellow ?" he was asking into my bag as i wrapped my hands.

"there's one in there. might be a grape actually."

his eyes went wide and his digging took on an edge of concern (it was actually panic but he would deny that it was panic so we'll call it concern). upon finding the bottle, disappointment, frustration and disgust mingled across his face. "no yellow." he asked rhetorically.

"nah, they just had grape at the 7-11."

oron shut his eyes to gather himself, tapped his foot, the fist not holding the detested bottle firmly planted into his hip. he looked skyward, then left, then at my feet. everywhere but my eyes until i snickered at his not-so-carefully concealed anger. the disbelief in his eyes was sharp, like superman using heat vision to burn a hole in a lake because it had the wrong flavour of fish in it.

"ok," said oron, shaking the bottle at me, "i no like. grape, i no like."

"hahahaha tough it out princess," i say to him. he doesn't understand my words, but i think he gets the scorn in my tone because he kicks me in the ass hard enough that i yelp "hey !!" at him.

"GRAPE I NO LIKE !" he yells back, and kicks me again as i laugh and try (but fail) to dodge. "ONLY YELLOW ONLY !" he dropped the bottle on my bag and went into the field in search of a stick.

he found one.