I know, I know ... before I had a boyfriend, all I could talk about was the gym and the fact I didn’t have a boyfriend. Now that I do have one, I am afraid I am a bit of a bore about having one.

Just give me a month or so to get the novelty out of my system a bit and then I promise I will try and stop being smug and awful.

But in the meantime, I’ll continue with my smugness and awfulness.

Though I’ve dated a few Thai men since I’ve been living in Bangkok, I’ve never had a proper relationship with one before. I had no idea how interesting and fun it was going to be to see someone with such a different culture to my own.

Mostly, it doesn’t affect things that much; he’s a great guy and we get on, so who cares about anything else, right? But, of course, other things do periodically come into play to some degree or another.

At the more insignificant end of the scale, there’s the food thing. I am a vegetarian and he runs a beef noodle restaurant. At breakfast, he’ll slurp soup with congealed blood in it, while I have fruit and yogurt. Or he’ll look at my green smoothie as if it’s the most offensive thing he’s ever seen while he snacks on ears and intestines. These are actual things he eats and enjoys.

There’s other fun differences, such as the language barrier. His English is great, though he doesn’t write to me in Thai because I can read and understand a fair amount, but quite often there’s a rogue word I don’t know and, of course, translating it usually results in something nonsensical, such as today’s example “the integral dust”. The meaning was actually a slang way to say “I love you so much”.

Another fun difference is that he doesn’t celebrate Christmas. He’s not against it or anything, it’s just not a big deal to him. So, this year, I am introducing him to all the best things about Christmas; you know, advent calendars, Christmas films, Christmas trees and eating chocolate in bed.

All of these differences and fun and irrelevant, but there are bigger cultural differences, too. Sometimes I am overwhelmed at how involved his family is in his life and scared about how I can ever impress them with my limited Thai abilities (however, they have always been lovely to me, so this is just complete paranoia).

Another difficulty is that, when my boyfriend sits down to discuss politics with his friends in the evening (in Thai, of course), I am often sitting there mute. Firstly, my Thai isn’t good enough to understand what’s going on. Secondly, I am not too politically minded — especially in a country I don’t yet fully understand. It’s hard to not feel a little bit of a moron when you’re sitting there not understanding a word your boyfriend is saying. There’s only so long you can watch people and look interested when you don’t understand a thing. Then what? You start playing with your phone? That seems rude. You start gazing around the room at other people? You look bored out of your mind. Of course, the real answer is that you study much, much harder at Thai school until you can actually make an intellectual comment in Thai, rather than just be able to say silly things along the lines of “the more desserts you eat, the fatter you get” or “I learn Thai twice a week, but I don’t speak it well” (although the latter sentence will earn you lots of praise and compliments, so I do love to wheel that one out on a daily basis).

I suppose my point (apart from another excuse to talk about my boy) is that, even after almost three years in Bangkok, I’m still only just scratching the surface of what Thailand is about which, for me, is the most fun thing about being an expat. Always learning, always excited.