No billboards in Hawaii either, by law. Thank goodness!
I can’t think of anything I miss living in Thailand. Such be the benefit of having grown up in desolate West Texas. Pretty much everything is here. Maybe really good Mexican food like in northern New Mexico, but what we have in Bangkok is passable. Sort of.
Living in Germany with my Army (now-ex) husband, I missed sweet corn, tomatoes, and Vidalia onions. Luckily APO addresses aren’t subject to the same customs restrictions that ‘normal’ international shipments are (or at least they weren’t in the late 80’s), and my mom was able to keep me in good supply.
I’m from the deep South, but live in Cleveland now. It’s not a foreign country, but dang I miss being able to buy hot boiled peanuts from a roadside vendor. Every time I’m there for a visit, I buy gobs of them, freeze them and ship them home. They’re really very good reheated, but it just isn’t the same as getting that soggy little paper bag full of steaming boiled peanuts, slurping the hot, salty liquid and tossing the shells out the car window.
New Zealand (and, to a lesser extent, Australia) both produce a lot of excellent cheese.
Which is no help if you don’t live in Europe, Australia, or NZ, but there you go. 
Is there a specific brand you’re looking for? Every reasonably- sized supermarket I’ve ever been in here in Australia has Hokey Pokey icecream.
I love Steak & Cheese pies and haven’t had a decent one in years (whenever I duck back to NZ one of my first stops is usually a dairy to get a steak & cheese pie, a can of Fresh Up, and a Jelly Tip), but there are heaps of New Zealand shops around Australia now that stock Kiwi pretty much everything. Except pies like the sort you get from dairies and petrol stations, which are indeed very tasty.
Until recently it was surprisingly difficult to get Maggi Onion Soup Mix here, which makes a wonderful dip that everyone I’ve ever made it for loves, but for some reason Maggi don’t market the stuff in Australia.
I didn’t expect to miss grass (no not THAT!), but I do. There’s hardly any of the damn stuff here in Japan.
OK, so we did shop in the same places. But the thing is… I’m sure someone from Costa Rica who came to Spain would miss fruit, too. While the fish was a matter of “narrower choices,” the fruit was mostly a matter of “different choices.” Mangos are rare in Spain; this means a Spaniard isn’t used to eating them and a Costa Rican in Spain will miss them. Reinetas? Peras de San Juan? Navelinas? I was stunned the other day to see reinetas in a Scottish supermarket; never seen the other two in a non-mediterranean country. In America you find bananas, in Spain it’s a matter of national pride to buy plátano de Canarias. Most of the apples we saw in Costa Rica were red ones from Canada which only one of us liked; we did find Golden sometimes and every time we fell on them like a flock of vultures. Almost all the grapes we saw were seedless green (moscatel once, near Christmas; most of the grapes grown in my area are black). When we were landing in Madrid the first time, my coworker from Santander was saying he was about ready to kill for some of the little green apples (smaller than reinetas) that farmers near his hometown grow for cider.
I really shouldn’t interact with you at all…now you are making things worse for me…
mmmm…Jellytips…mmmm
Onion dip - best with chicken or green onion ripples…mmmmmm
Yeah - but I am living in Singapore - you don’t tend to get too much of the stuff here, unless it is the high end gourmet which is not what I want. I can’t remember the last time I had a proper steak and cheese pie…
I remember doing the “pie run” for the warehouse on a Saturday morning, we used to order 60 plus pies…get them fresh from the oven, totally delodious
I just remembered lollycake - do you all have that anywhere else (except Australia)…malt biscuits, condensed milk and fruit puffs?
It was YUMMY
Schweppes is owned or distributed by Coke as well
http://www.coke.co.nz/assets/img/aboutcocacola/coca-colainnewzealand.pdf
& this is sort of like the Marmite thread in the Pit! Another way you can tell I wasn’t born in NZ is I don’t like Hokey pokey ice cream! Far too sweet. Or crunchy bars. I suppose you are missing those too! 
Martini, are you a kiwi as well?
I expect I can imagine the answer already, but I’m curious: What do the monkeys do if they catch you in the act?
Originally, yes. But I live in Australia now and don’t feel any real affinity towards NZ beyond the various culinary treats produced thereof.
Lollycake is delicious, as is Rice Bubble Square, which I’ve never encountered anywhere outside Australasia. Also, Pavlova (with cream, passionfruit, strawberries, and kiwifruit on top!) doesn’t seem to be very well known outside Australia or NZ either.
Hee - I guess you’ve never made home made hokey pokey then? Recipe used to be in the Edmunds (sp?) cook book…sugar, golden syrup melted and stir and bring to boil, add in bicarbonate of soda, stir rapidly then put in tin to cool - we always used to put in freezer.
Aslo sultana pasties. Take the left over pastry from a bacon and egg pie, roll it flat, put in sultanas, close like a pie, bake at 180 for about 10 minutes, eat while hot. Totally delicious…
I always preferred rice krispies (the ones made with cocoa) rather than rice bubble square, but then we go to anzac biscuits, and also custard square - and lamington.
Then when she was enthusiastic mum used to make this wonderful biscuit…
wine biscuit base, with marshmallow (home made) on top followed by chocolate icing - I loved that, but it never lasted long enough.
Oooerr - and gingernuts, its been years since I’ve had a gingernut.
Then they view us as a competitor and will be less tolerable to having us around them. Capuchins are head-strong, brave little bastards and, if they don’t like us, studying them becomes impossible, especially if they are breaking big branches over our heads.
Omighosh, yes. Every time I’ve come back from Europe, I’ve had chocolate withdrawl. I’ve made my wife promise to not let me buy American chocolate in the drug store, no matter how fancy the packaging.
Fagyi is not as cold as American hard-pack ice cream. I understand and like Gelato/Fagyi, but it’s not what I grew up on, and so it took me a long while to get used to it.
Yeah, the public transit is just fucking incredible. I was able to get from my apartment to school 3 different ways. This map shows just the trams and subways, but they also have many buses, trolleys (buses on electric overhead tracks), a children’s railway, a cogwheel railway, a skilift, and a funicular. They are also expanding.
As one of my teachers in Hungary put it: you guys have Standards in the US. When you buy something, you just expect it will work. Here? Not so much.
The first time I lived in England I didn’t expect to miss the sound of big burbling V-8 engines. It took a couple of months to realize that’s what was missing against the backdrop of city traffic.
I also came to miss US-style sink taps where the hot and cold streams are merged. Those separate H/C types are awful! When I use the bathroom sink, it’s usually to wash my hands and/or face. When your water temp choices are either freezing or scalding…well, no. Just no. And filling the basin up with warm water and then splashing it wasn’t appealing, either. It felt like I was putting the soap scum and dirt right back on my face.
Germany (Niedersachsen).
Hows this for an idea?
You fill up ½ the bowl with either hot or cold and repeat the performance with either hot or cold testing at intervals until you get the temp you want.
Works a treat, you should try it next time you visit our fair island
True, but you probably use more water doing it that way. Then again, I imagine that water shortages aren’t really an issue in the UK, what with there not being any deserts, much less with fifty million people living in them.
I’m in America. For shaving or face-washing I just use the hottest water I can get from my American-style faucet to wet the washrag, and then use that. I imagine that works pretty well with any kind of tap.
When I was vacationing in Argentina I found that I missed being able to eavesdrop. I knew enough Spanish to muddle through things as a tourist, but I couldn’t understand it spoken at full speed. Sitting in a restaurant or on a bus crowded with locals the conversations would be flying around me, and I just felt totally isolated, far more so than if I’m in the same situation in the US.
