Part of the excitement of travelling is sharing culture. You get to learn about another world, and you also sometimes get to share some of your own culture with the people you meet overseas.

I got a ride one morning from a pair of very young acne crusted lads who were driving a van around Malaysia giving villagers free cartons of Milo milk drinks. My heart swelling with Aussie pride, I told them that Milo was an important part of my cultural identity, and along with vegemite, bleeding steaks, and Winfield Blue 25s formed a vital part of the Aussie staple diet.
My new friends were equally enthusiastic about their employers product, and gushingly assured me they had drunk gallons of it every day since they started their tour three months earlier. The raw, pus filled swellings on their genetically lactose intolerant faces left me in no doubt as to their sincerity. We celebrated our new found cultural connection with a round of Milo drinks, which apart from the tiny size of the cartons were exactly like the Aussie product.
Now we were friends I felt confident to offer them some constructive criticism without giving offense, so I gently told them that their pronunciation of the products name was incorrect.
It’s ‘M-eye-lo’ I patiently repeated, not ‘M-ee-lo’. ‘M-eye-lo…’
They were sharp young men with excellent English skills and they got it very quickly, and thanked me for helping them avoid perpetuating a linguistic error.
They dropped me off at the next truck stop, but before we went our separate ways we ate a banquet of sensationally tasty curries and pastries, bursting with exotic vegetables and subtly flavoured sauces, from a roadside stand. After the meal we shared another round of Milo, and I passed around my pack of 80 cent Malaysian Winfields, happy to be able to offer something to the cultural exchange.