Being a lexicon of poor half-lies produced by a disinformed foreign volunteer living and working a year in Thailand

As part of a year-long working holiday in Thailand from autumn 1995 to summer 1996, Tamlan Dipper compiled an encyclopedic diary of the locale. We've decided to serialise it for your delectation, and being awkward people we're starting not with the logical first entry but with the entry for ice-cream.

There are three brands of ice-cream sold in Khamphaeng Phet. One brand I know nothing about. One brand is local, and is made just down the road, producing all sorts of lollies and cones, and even an ice-cream wafer. The third brand is Walls - yes, Walls - which carries all its English varieties, plus some uniquely Thai varieties, like durian, or sweetcorn.

Al most all Thai ice-creams have an amazingly creamy flavour because they are made with coconut-milk added.

Ice-cream is sold in shops and from stalls and from bicycle wagons. Walls is guilty (in my opinion) of the single worst feat of western exploitation in the form of their franchised ice-cream carts. Part of the tacky plastic freezer and umbrella attatchment provided is equipped with a 'cute' jingle machine, supplying two versions: the first is a simple note group, the second a 'rocked up' version of the same. So vile are these tunes that the vendors cannot even be trusted to use them and the freezer is set to automatically use them at set intervals as long as it is turned on. Walls vendors are frequently sullen and dark-cast, in contrast with their normal rivals who simply ring small brass bells and are usually cheerful.

I hate the Walls ice-cream carts.