Ti Pu tong

"Pu tong. Pu tong. English only!"

Was the only phrase I could say to the lady who approached me, while I was eating at the nearby hawker.

She mumbled something in Chinese. There I was, with my half opened mouth with partially chewed sweet and sour pork with spring beans. A perplexed with wrinkled forehead and connected eyebrows look signaled to her I had not understood a word.

She did a drinking motion.

"Oh! You mean Drink". I said. Proud of my sign language deciphering skills.

I took a quick glance over their fridge. The drinks where hard to see from where I was seating. Then I saw something that resembled my favorite Mountain Dew and ordered that.

Well it wasn't Mountain Dew. It was colored the similarly, but had Chinese characters with some kind of fruit pictured. Knowing my limited phrases I didn't attempt to have it changed.

The taste was kind of hard to make out. It had some kind of weird bubble gum with a minty flavor on it. It was like drinking toothpaste. Bleh. Didn't take another sip. Just continued with my meal.

The food was great and I got to successfully use the line taught to me by my Mandarin speaking house mate. Minus my boo boo with the drink, not bad for my first time in a hawker.