I survived southern Thailand!

Leaving Thailand by train was an exercise in persistence and cold hard calculation. Following the mad-transit, Transit van experience getting into Bangkok from Cambodia, I have sworn off any bus travel unless forced to at gun-point. When I made my train booking to Chumphon, I also tried to book the next leg from there to Butterworth in Malaysia, but I could only get to Hat Yai (or Haad Yai depending on your spelling). Chumphon itself is known as the gateway to Southern Thailand and Hat Yai is the capital of the southern region. 


Before I started out, absolutely everyone but everyone told me "DO NOT GO TO SOUTHERN THAILAND" due to all the terrorist bombings that have happened there. So you can imagine that I was a little concerned about having to stop at Hat Yai and then find my own way out of the country from there. I worked it out so that I would go through there between Christmas and New Year. I figured that if anyone wanted to bomb anything, then either of those 2 times would be far more attractive than the Wednesday inbetween. Also, I quickly profiled the locations that have previously been targeted and just avoided those kinds of places, except for the railway station which was unavoidable obviously.


To get from Hat Yai to Butterworth, my choice was scary bus ride over hills (ummm, NO!), an even scarier minivan ride at high speed (ha-bloody-ha!) or spending a night in a town that has been plagued by terrorist bombings. I made the safest choice of course and stayed the night.


As I was wandering around the town, I was struck by how down at heel it all seemed to be. A lot of businesses were closed, it was dirty and also rather mouldy. I had flash backs to South Korea in summer time when it turns into a peninsular of reeking moulds. Even relatively new vehicles were rusting and banged around and the people, while generally friendly enough, had an equally jaded air about them. The source of all this dejectedness finally revealed itself to me when I was in a bookshop. They were selling pics of the severe flooding that happened there on 01/11/10 (note the date). With Hat Yai being to Malaysians as Pattaya is to Westerners, I'm sure business will pick up, being that it's 'wrong' kind of business, that could refocus terrorist efforts on the town again. 


I have since meet a few foreigners who travelled Southern Thailand and all seemed to agree that the south was the best part of the country with the friendliest people. Damn shame about the hot-heads.

Thailand part 2

Well I'm glad to say that things improved greatly in Chumphon. My 'down at heel' diving resort turned out to also be an eco-resort, and although not spit-polish new, was certainly a more than adequate resort. 


No water transport is allowed at the beach so no jet-skis, banana boats, para-sailing or other beach nuisances allowed. Just the way it is meant to be.

I spent Christmas here and we had a special turkey dinner on Christmas Eve and five minutes of Christmas carols between 7-7.05pm on Christmas Day. Carols were mostly sung in Thai.

I spent my days walking on the beach, reading, eating, having massages and swimming in the pool. A hardship I know, but someone had to do it. Quite literally, someone had to as I was one of the few guests for most of the time I was there. The only negative was that I came out in a rash all over my arms and shoulders. It appeared that their environmentally friendly laundry detergent was not so Aly friendly.

Being an eco-resort, there were some critters around the place including a number of these little fellas. One that hung out by the pool was very human-tolerant however this guy was very shy. This is a shot of him coming out of his underground burrow. I had to sit quietly on the path while he inched his way out. I also met my first snake in-the-wild, so to speak. It was on a wet path that I was walking along. I looked down to discover that I was straddling a 4 foot long snake, partially coiled. It looked at me and I looked at it and we both moved off in our different directions. Later when I described it to the staff, they informed me that it was most probably venomous and were amazed that I took my snake encounter in my stride, so to speak. Apparently, I was supposed to scream and jump around, and probably also get bitten.

Bangkok

"One night in Bangkok" would have been enough. I don't think I've ever instantly fallen in hate with a place like I have with BKK. I've had a few 'really don't like's, mainly big, polluted Chinese cities, but I would take one of those over this place any day. I have to say that I did not have high expectations of the place to start with and these were right on the button.


I think the worst aspect is that it's a soul-less hole. The 'land of smiles' should be renamed 'the land of lies.' Getting a smile out of anyone is like trying to get blood out of a stone and they are only happy when ripping off people. I met one poor little old German lady (budget) traveller who was constantly being targeted for rip offs. There is obviously no respect for age; no respect for anything at all. There is also a lot of man/woman-handling. They shove and pull and push people around like sacks of rice. I have a pretty strong 'don't fuck with me' face developed from years of living in Asia so I don't get this, but I see others who have the 'deer in headlights' face on the receiving end of such treatment. I will just be happy to get out of this country without a serious confrontation with some idiot who shoves me. 


I have managed to do some shopping. I had my heart set on a pair of sparkly embroidered jeans  and I got not one, but two pairs. OK, so one pair is a size too small, but I plan on fitting them within six months. The others fit well now so I'm happy. I got a few other bits and pieces and have put a stop to any more shopping until Kuala Lumpur or Singapore. 


The great disappointment has been the food. It's the one thing I did have high expectations of but unfortunately these have not been met. Seriously, they haven't got a clue what to do with a fresh vegetable. Everything is slathered in fat and sugar (even more than elsewhere in Asia), and they have the disgusting practice of double frying. Without going somewhere pricey, it's difficult to get well made food of any description, even Thai. The worst so far was a tom yum kung that had curdled. It looked like a bowl of vomit. It had been drenched in kaffir lime and had completely unbalanced flavours. I've also had extremely average to poor green curries and along with crappy food, I have parasites again so it's time for a dose.


Tomorrow, I'm off by train to the relatively un-touristed town of Chumphon and am staying at a diving resort out of town. It's apparently a little down at heel but like Thailand used to be before the tourist boom. It also has a good beach, a 30 metre pool, boats to Koh Toa and squid fishing at night. Sounds right about my kind of place. I hold out some hopes of finishing my time in Thailand on a positive note.

Border crossing

So I managed to exit Cambodia on my cancelled passport. I also only realised as I was about to cross the border that my last entry to Cambodia was exactly on the day that my passport only had 6 months left on it, so was technically no longer valid. The Cambodian border guards really didn't know what to make of my various passports and 2 visas to cancel, so they gave up and stamped me out of the country in my new passport. I was really counting on being too difficult to be bothered with. The Thai side stamped me in in my new passport, after going through the whole old/new passport thing again. I didn't mention the fact that I no longer have a country of residence. I've struck problems with this before so now I lie. 


I found a minibus/transit van quite quickly and off we went towards Bangkok. Three minibus changes and a whole lot of rather fast driving later, I arrived in Bangkok. As I hadn't booked anything, I headed straight to a guest house recommended on one of the main websites. It was a pit but a sleepable pit so I slept.


Highlights: 1) 7eleven convenience stores - my first in about 4 years. I didn't even realise I had missed them until I was in one again, and a really big bonus; the Thai version of 7eleven has steamed buns with all sorts of yummy curry & bbq pork fillings. I particularly like the rabbit green curry ones. Ahh, it took me back to the gimbap triangle days of South Korea. 2) Surviving the road race that was the elevated expressway.


Lowlights: 1) About 50kms of elevated expressway into Bangkok. Along with heights, my other great fear is going fast in cars. Put these two together, throw in a whole pile of concrete, traffic and a driver with formula one ambitions, and you have my version of hell on earth. Once we got on the thing, my heart sank through the floor boards, and tried really hard to get back down to ground level purely through wish-power. It was an horrendous trip; 3 lanes to dodge and weave through, 140kmph minimum and teeny-tiny side barriers that don't keep in any vehicle taller than a sedan (vans do fall off and squash everyone before bursting into flames all the time). I was pretty close to bursting with fright by the time we got off the thing. 2) The manky hotel, but by comparison with the number one lowlight, it really doesn't rate high on the low scales.

I am no longer there...

...in Cambodia that is. At the moment, I'm sitting in a cafe in Bangkok nursing shopping injuries i.e. blisters, and massage injuries i.e. wrenched back muscles from when the stupid cow of a masseuse grabbed me and tried to throw me around. I specifically did not ask for a Thai style massage because I didn't want to be wrenched around and pounded like I was a big blob of sticky rice. Enough of my pain; what of my travels thus far?


Day 1
After much to-ing and fro-ing about which land border crossing to use to exit Cambodia, I chose to go the Koh Kong way. This involves a 12 hour bus trip, which can be broken into 2 stages so that's what I did. The first leg from Phnom Penh to Koh Kong includes a windy, switchbacked road across the Cardamom mountains. Given my fear of heights, I did quite well to not leap out of the bus and walk all the way. I must say the bus driver was very good, particularly for a local driver, and maintained a suitably very slow speed for all the tricky bits. Like every Asian bus driver I've ever had, he did suffer a bit from what I call 'destination fever.' This generally occurs about 50kms from the destination when the driver just wants to get to the end so he drives too fast and throws the bus around quite a bit. In Vietnam, this is also when they manage to run the highest number of motorbikes off the road for the whole trip.


The bus was full of mostly locals all enquiring about each other's weight: 'how many kilos?' seems to be the new 'hello'; and whinging about the bus ticket scams. There was also a little bit of elderly flirting and an offer of marriage, should a certain little old lady's husband die soonish. 

Koh Kong is a quaint little border town, in the border town scheme of things. I stayed at the Apex Hotel; ac, hot water and small pool for $15 a night, however the staff weren't too hot in their multiplication skills. It was very cold, about 23 degrees Celsius with a chilly breeze coming off the sea. Even the dogs were hunkered down, so I passed on a water taxi tour of the immediate coast.


Highpoints: 1) In crossing the Cardamom mountains, a protected forest it should be pointed out, someone had just chopped down a tree and the bus filled with the smell of cardamom. Unfortunately, the locals all whipped out their tiger balm and promptly overcame the gorgeous spice smell. I have no idea what that was about but I suspect something to do with funerals/death/dead bodies and thinking they will all die any moment if they don't get the offending smell away from themselves. 2) An 'elephants crossing' road sign.
Lowpoint: Aforementioned mathematic ability of receptionist. Could not calculate US$7 into Thai baht at the rate of 30 Tb to 1 USD i.e. 210b. He kept getting almost double that which of course I wasn't entertaining in the slightest, then he got very stroppy with the ensuing mathematics lesson...

I am still here...

...just been incredibly busy with the logisitics of another international move and a busy term at work. I will start posting more regularly once I hit the road. Later this week, I head to the border town of Koh Kong and overnight there to break up the 12 hour bus journey to Bangkok. The trip is all over land and over ocean with hopefully a significant amount of beach time. so I should have plenty of time to post and put up a few pics. 

Wahoo - it's my one year weight loss anniversary

A year ago on November the 7th, I weighed 26kgs heavier than I do today (holding steady at 79) and my waist, at 42 inches, was 11 inches rounder. I have started swimming again after many years of not even trying, and can go for long walks. I use anti-inflammatories, mild pain killers and artificial sweetener as and when needed. I had always thought of these things as bad for you, but have discovered it's even worse not to use the things that are going to help liberate me from excess body fat. My Hashimoto's is probably as under control as it can be, and the steady weight loss has helped to gradually increase the effect of the medication without going through the horrors of adjusting to an increased dose of synthetic hormone. I have more energy than I have had in many years, and people I haven't seen in a while are gob smacked when they see me. I now have as many days when I feel good as when I feel shite. Yes, there is something else going on that is about to get addressed, but looking back over the past few years and the successes I've experienced in battling smoking, Hashimoto's & medication, as well as losing weight, I'm sure I can handle this. I've stopped asking why I constantly have some health thing to battle as there is no answer; I just have to get on with it, which is what I plan to keep doing. I'm looking forward to the next year, with new adventures, foods, people, challenges, shopping and getting to re-experience 'civilization,' whatever that may be. I would really like to get a cat.

well I've dog-gone gone and done it...

I've handed in my notice at work, I've given my landlord notice, I've emailed my moving company guy for a quote and I'm waiting to find out if I can get a berth on a passenger carrying freighter from anywhere on the Malay Peninsular to anywhere in Australia, but preferably Perth. After only 6 months in Cambodia, I am headed back to civilization, and proper medical facilities, which is what has prompted the bringing forward of the long term plan. 


I went and had a good chat with the doctor I saw for my previous thyroid check up and we decided that it would be best to get myself properly tested etc for all my various medical weirdnesses. There is nothing imminent, but she said I should be thinking of availing myself of some Western medical care in order to get things sorted out by January. Basically, the tummy thing seems related to various foods like milk and wheat so I'm struggling to eat healthily, and if I can't access alternatives soon, I will develop other problems. 


So the plan is to go from Phnom Penh to the Cambodian coast line and spent a couple of days farewelling my favourite parts of it. I'll take a bus from Sihanoukville, on the coast, straight through to Bangkok. It's about 12 hours and the worst leg of the trip. In BKK, I will hopefully catch up with some friends and do some serious shopping. I'll then leg it down to Singapore by train to spend New Years with friends, before heading back up to Georgetown and Kuala Lumpur, and hopefully a berth on a freighter heading to Perth in Western Australia. If I can't get a boat, I'll have to get my creative thinking hat on as I flying is really horrendously uncomfortable for me.


In a couple of weeks, we have a long weekend so I'm going to Ho Chi Minh City for a farewell fling of shopping and saying my goodbyes to people I will probably never see again. I have already mentally starting to say my good byes to Asia. I'm feeling very strange about the whole thing; excited to be going to Perth and very, very sad to be leaving Asia. Maybe...I will be back.

no belated birthday bubbles for me

Now I have the horrible bug that is going around and am on my second day of almost no voice, which also means no work. I desperately need extra sleep but during the day the whine of saws cutting through cement and/or re-bar precludes anything as restive as that, although I am very pleased to say that my dead neighbour's second funeral only lasted for one day so I don't have to deal with that cacophony whilst sick. 


So there will be no birthday bubbles this weekend either. By the time I get to have any it will be Halloween bubbles time and one of the best reasons for partaking of bubbles will have passed me by. Perhaps I'll take a rain check and slot it in when circumstances come together in a more fortuitous manner. 

I forgot one small birthday detail...

I decided to have a birthday weigh-in and the result was 78.5kgs, down 1.5kgs. There has not been a '7' at the front of my weight for about 11 years so this is a major breakthrough for me. I'm cautious about celebrating this yet as the waist is still the same, so maybe not a consolidated loss, and I have just had intestinal issues which may have interfered with the result. What it does do, is prove to myself that it is possible to get on the scales and actually see a number that starts with '7' and there is no mysterious curse/bad fairy/rule of the universe that forces me to have numbers starting '8' or higher when I get on scales.

Happpy Birthday to Me!

I had had visions of a pleasant late lunch somewhere down by the riverfront, glass of bubbles to hand, the breeze wafting in from the water and lounging its way across some French colonial style balcony; food and conversation to accompany. Well, that's not going to happen.


Late Thursday evening found me at the local international medical clinic with stabbing pain in my lower right abdomen. I had been in bed and drifting towards sleep when I was rudely and insistently brought to full wakefulness by the sudden onset of this acute pain. An hour later, it had continued unabated and I found myself panting rather than breathing, which I took as a sign to make my way to the nearest medical facility. After much poking, prodding and ultra-sounding, I was sent home with a supply of anti-inflammatories and anti-spasmodics to ease the pain, and an appointment for the following day. Despite whatever it was that so violently interrupted my life, I enjoyed the lovely, floppiness inducing, cosyifying  effects of the meds and had the best sleep in a long time. Following a few tests the next day, it turned out that I was hosting a large population of non-specific bacteria i.e. there was a lot of the little buggers but no-one knows what they were. These kinds of unidentified bacteria are common in Asia (come on, where are all the researchers who want to name some new discovery after themselves) and are dealt with in a heavy handed manner. This saw me partaking of a cocktail of anti-parasitic, anti-bacterial and antibiotic meds. The results were rather spectacular and it seems that I have finally been purged of my inner troubles. This will not have me racing to eat bread again however, as the gluten thing has been raised in the past so will need to be addressed separately, and soon. A final parting comment from the rather odd young doc I saw has me quite bemused. It went along the lines of "You're in really good shape considering everything." Yeah, well that's because I have had to work bloody hard at it unlike many 'normal' people who take their health for granted.


Just to add birthday insult to bacterial injury, my dead neighbour's 2nd funeral started this morning. At 6am, discordant plinkey-plunkey music starting spewing forth from loudspeakers, just in case the first go round didn't work and ghosts were still chasing his spirit around the streets of Phnom Penh. As I have previously noted, the wealthy dead here don't seem to have a very good idea of getting on with the business of passing over, and remain as earth bound spirits desperately clinging to their worldly excesses. Just f**k off already old man and leave the rest of us in peace! 


What to do about my birthday then? I'm going to go shopping, with a high level of intent to purchase, and next weekend, I will hopefully be sitting on a balcony somewhere down by the river with a glass of bubbly to hand, celebrating my happy late birthday!

today's weigh

weight - 80kgs (borderline to major breakthrough, must push past this)
waist - 31 inches (ditto)


It seems I need to walk for about an hour in total per day otherwise it all grinds to a halt. This doesn't have to be all at once and even seems more effective in a couple of smaller bursts. I managed 750 metres in the pool on Friday and now am feeling it a little in my shoulders and buttocks - that must have some good long term results. Bring on the tight buns! (ROFLMAO)  Stomach issues returned and some improvement has happened over the past couple of days of no dairy and no gluten. A number of other niggly issues are also improving.


This is actually not a good thing and requires a visit to the doc to discuss the possibility of Celiac (Coeliac Br.) Disease. Also it's common in Hashi sufferers and is even linked to the onset of Hashis. I would feel depressed about it if I wasn't in fact feeling quite mentally chipper. I even managed to have a massage today without bawling my eyes out the whole way through, which has happened twice recently. My poor massage lady must think I'm a right nutter...

So how's this exercise thing going?

The first week went very well. I managed to eat usually reasonable cheap, tasty and healthy salads at a variety of locations withing a 20 to 30 minute walk from work or home. Some were better than others - reviews coming soon. I dropped 2.5kgs which took me back to 81kgs. Quite a bit of muscle pain was experienced but nothing that a few light-weight painkillers before bed couldn't resolve before the morning, and starting it all over again. Mentally, I felt more alert and enjoyed the challenge of 'finding' my dinner. 


Then came the 'episode' with the gate. Long story short, I've got some bad bruising on my left arm & hand, which got stuck in it, and a very painful left hip and knee, which were involved in breaking it open. This was all due to the idiocy of the person who moved the padlock from it's regular, accessible position, to one where it was impossible to open and left me stuck in the bloody gate, on the street, at night with robbers and murderers running around. (I don't think the locals quite understand the concept of 'serial killer' but they do seem to have several operating rather successfully, and unimpeded by investigation, in the city.)

The upshot is that I haven't been up to walking much at all. Being determined, I managed to and from work (only 10 mins each way) but by a mid-week, sneaky extra weigh-in, it was apparent that this is not enough and it was crawling back up. As we have a 4 day, long weekend this weekend, I decided to stay and sort myself out so with the aid of anti-inflammatories, I managed about and hour and 20 mins walk yesterday and plan on swimming each day for the rest of the holiday. 


Everyone has gone to visit their rellies in the countryside so I'm having a very peaceful time and restoring my inner calm. 

Back to it...

...work, the diet, the grindstone in general. After a hiatus from the eating plan, and putting on 2kgs as a result, it's time to get back on that horse. I've decided that I had been taking too rigorous an approach to my food and have been thinking about how I did so well to start with. I think a lot of my initial diet success while I was in Vietnam was due to the fact that I didn't actually have to do a lot. Apart from breakfast, I had grilled fish and salad at my work cafe 5 days a week for lunch, made my own salad-based dinner about 5 times a week and pretty much ate out for the rest. Since then, I've been trying too hard, which has left me jaded about the whole thing. I also have a much more civilized schedule this term with no evening classes so I've decided to basically do what I did in Vietnam, but in reverse. 


Breakfast and snacks aside, it will go something like this. As there is no cafe at work and nothing that's both suitable and cheap in the vicinity, I will make my lunch most days with maybe the occasional restaurant trip. Then, due to my latest finish being 5.30pm, I will go somewhere for dinner most of the time. There are plenty of places around town that do excellent and reasonably priced salads, as well as interesting, low fat starters that can be accompanied by a side salad or vege platter, and there's always the local sour fish soups which are very low fat and one of my favourite things to eat. It shouldn't be difficult to keep within plan with a bit of self control, is what I'm trying to say


On top of that, I'm going to walk to work, as long as it's not monsooning down, and walk to as many things as possible on the proviso that it's not dark out, and therefore dangerous. I have been very lazy in this seeing as Phnom Penh is eminently walkable  especially in camparison to Ho Chi Minh City which just isn't. I decided to test the walking waters yesterday and ended up doing a 3 hour trek around the city; mad dogs, Englishmen, and all that. I felt I had to walk until I couldn't anymore, which did get rid of a whole lot of negative energy and reminded me that exercise is not just about losing or maintaining weight, but is also essential for good mental health. As I have been dealing with a certain level of frustration lately this was a timely reminder. I'm also going to try to swim 2 or 3 times a week although this may be a little hit and miss what with all the pools being outdoor and entering the heaviest part of the monsoon season. I don't much fancy being struck by lightning whilst doing the breast stroke.


A further incentive to get the diet cranked up again came from a wham-bang-thank-you-maam shopping trip to Vietnam. It was reasonably successful but would have been more so if my bum didn't get in the way of a number of purchases. There's nothing like the misery of trying on beautiful clothes that won't fit, no matter how much I want them to, to light a fire under that same fat ass to do something about it!

Life's a buffet...

...well at least lunch often is in this city. Having recently discovered the phenomenon of the Phnom Penh buffet, I now notice that it's everywhere. For between US$3-5, you can scoff and trough your way through a pretty good selection of Western and Cambodian standards that are well prepared and most importantly, fresh. 


Today, I finally visited a local restaurant called Jacob's Well that I keep meaning to check out but hadn't got around to. For $4.60, I buffeted rather well. The quality was so good that I will go back to check out their salad menu. The place was well patronised and the staff capable and friendly. Like many a place in PP, it's an NGO training restaurant which trains disadvantaged youth in real skills then pays them a proper living wage. I could easily find somewhere for $1 or $1.50 less but then the staff would not be paid a livable wage. And that's the different a dollar makes.

where's the bleeping pool?!

Last weekend I decided to go for a swim. I was in fact quite desperate for some physical activity, which is unlike my usual lizard-like self, but I've finally accepted the fact that I won't lose any more weight without it and and I was also suffering some end of term stress and really needed to release  it. Well, release I did but not quite in the way I had envisioned.


The closest pool to me is at the new gym, The Place II. Not being quite sure exactly where it was, I called the first Place for the address before setting out. It didn't take long to realise they had given me the wrong address so I called back. Now they decided I should phone the new Place so gave me that number. I call from a very busy street and a mousy little voice answers. She refuses all requests to speak more loudly and I can't hear a word. I call the first Place again and get a different girl. She won't give me the address. She only wants to talk about membership. After my 4th request for the address I started shouting, as you do. After about 4 more requests for the address, she says, "Oh, so you want the address?" as if I hadn't made myself clear in the first place. Something almost ruptured inside me and my jaw was hanging in amazement. And then just when a person thinks they can't be made to feel any less of a valid being, she says, "well, getting back to the membership..." How could I not explode? 


I decided to stomp my way to the first Place and complain and on the way found the other Place I was looking for. I went in and asked to speak to the manager and guess what I got in return, "You want a membership." More exploding about the first words out of her mouth being about parting a person and their money, and not listening to the question, and then I repeated everything to assist her comprehension. The manager come and proved to be a prized idiot and the assistant got worse. She effed off after firm instruction to do so. I did my best indignant not-ever-going-to-be-a-customer-in-this-overpriced-crappy-service-joint performance, before leaving. The manager was running out the door after me. His mouth was moving but I could no longer hear anything. My brain was blanking out the trauma. I did get to have a look at the pool though, and I have to say that it is the worst pool I've ever seen for choppiness and certainly not worth US$15 for a one day pass.


It took me the rest of the day and an early night to recover from getting so angry. I hate it, it's really upsetting but I have to vent or I implode. The following day I was even more desperate to swim, this now having become a physical craving. This time I went to Phnom Penh Sports Club. It's a little out of my way but for $5 for a day pass and with a decent length pool and full facilities (gym, steam, sauna, massage, cafe, separate kids' pool etc) it was just right. Although a little jaded, and aren't we all, it was clean and the atmosphere relaxed and friendly, just what I needed to reset my equilibrium.


I managed 24 lengths of the 25 metre pool before my arms started to tire. This is quite pathetic considering I used to swim 3-5ks, 3 or 4 times a week, but it has taken years for the rod and screws in my leg to settle down enough to allow swimming without severe pain. I also developed asthma after a bad reaction to the anasthetic during the operation to repair the leg, but I've altered my breathing pattern to cope with that. Instead of breathing on every 3rd stroke, I breathe on every second. It does slow me down but it also doesn't cause chest tightness. I'm not too stiff which is a vast improvement on even 6 months ago when I last swam, and then suffered increasing stiffness everyday for about a week before it started to abate. This is one symptom that seems to be under control and inline with my my recent normalised thyroid tests. I still have a  hell of a temper, but then I always did.

the little pill of happiness

I certainly have not been feeling myself for about a month now, but this morning woke up refreshed, energised and even happy. So what happened overnight to bring about this sunny morning disposition? Nothing more exciting than a little white pill that you chew up and swallow down. And what might be the purpose of this little white pill, hmmmm? Intestinal happiness, aka parasite control. Yep, I had worms and they made me miserable. 


The really silly thing is that since I've been living in Asia, I go through this about once a year. I totally forget that it is wise to take a preventative dose every six months and end up getting myself into a miserable, parasitic state. I feel like the proverbial goldfish swimming around the bowl, constantly forgetting everything and relearning everything. Is this just me or another example of Hashi memory?


Oh, and I don't believe that goldfish 'forget' quite so easily. I once trained a goldfish to a food command which would have been impossible if what they say about goldfish memory is true. It does make a nice analogy for Hashi memory though.

Big news from home...

First of all, there was a rocking, great big earthquake in Christchurch. My little brother and other friends there are all OK.


Secondly, I just became an auntie again. Another brother and his wife were delivered of a bouncing eight pound baby boy on September the second. This is rather an auspicious day in our family as both our grandfathers were born on September the second. Both of them were called Frank, too. Kind of spooky in a way.

Poor me...

I'm sick today. It seems to be some kind of tummy thing - just hope I'm not growing a new ulcer. Some people when they are sick can take some meds, tune out and sleep through the worst of it. I get all introspective and full of self blame. I dread getting a serious disease like cancer, not because of how horrible that would be, which it would, but because of the very nasty mental blame game that I would put myself through. All the smoking and drinking and all night partying at the time seemed like adult decisions being made by an adult, however with hindsight one sees that no proper decisions were being made and in fact a lot of time and energy was spent on avoiding the big issues altogether. See, I'm doing it again. Staring at my belly button.


So what comes from all this wallowing in one's internal mire?  Sometimes a little insight. Like, the reason why my weight loss has come to a screeching halt is because I need to get off my fat backside and get it into a gym or at the least, a pool. And that is going to hurt, a lot. There's the metal rod in my left leg and the internal tear in one of my abdominal ligaments and to top it all off there's the little issue of very poor muscle recovery. Back in the day when I was the energizer bunny, I could go hell for leather in the gym with very little if any after effect. Now, the merest extra movement has me in full body pain for a least a week afterwards. Anti-inflammatories are no help as the problem is in the nerves, not the muscles. Acquired Neural Sensitisation Disorder is what was diagnosed in NZ and there is not much that can be done about it apart from what I already do being a Hashi. There has been some promising research from Australia but that won't result in any kind of meds before I have to get my A into G and exercise. 


Wallowing is quite tiring and I still have a lot of it to do. I have to consider all my sad bits such as the root canal that has to be redone, the mole that needs to be removed from near my eye, the veins in the left leg that are damaged from the accident and need fixed, the muscle spasms in my neck and shoulders need attention, I need my regular check up x-rays on my dud leg to check the screw positions (some odd movement in there), I need to get the other leg x-rayed as I found bone spurs (only formed after a break, if I had 2 broken legs I'm going to sue someone to death), my tummy is irritable as anything and I need a haircut. I'm a wreck. Tomorrow when I hopefully feel better, I may return and delete this or I may just let it go so that I remember to actually get onto some of these things and feel better about my falling apart self.

this funeral is killing me...

From the bowels of this funeral tent emanates a cacophony fit to send a person insane. 


Unfortunately one of the old boys in my neighbourhood died a few days ago. I knew something was up when an unusual number of other old boys, and a few youngish ones, gathered around the plastic chairs they daily haul out onto the footpath in order to keep watch on the street and ensure the gossip machine is well fueled. In some ways this is quite reassuring as we have builders, aka thieves, living on the street (they live in whatever premises they are constructing). It seems to escape this informal neighbourhood watch committee that there are guards at every house but in reality, the old boys are probably far more of a deterrent to crime than the guards, who may in fact be thieving themselves. And you can be sure that no one misses out on being a topic of discussion. I can see it now: "That foreign teacher at number xx not come home until 10.30 last night. Maybe she finally get a boyfriend. No husband, no kids, so sad. Maid said she sick last week. No one to stay with her. No good. But no wonder she no husband, she yell to motodop driver, 'no I don't want any fxxxxxxg drugs!' motodop driver maybe good husband, she never know now...so sad"


Getting back to the funeral, we are now into day three of poorly recorded plinkey-plunkey cacophony  pouring forth from loud speakers. Just to complete the awfulness of it, there is no rhythm or pattern so as to to confuse the ghosts that are hanging around in order to confuse the dear departing spirit. Why it takes days to depart, I don't know  but they are really very slow at getting a move on to the afterlife compared to the Western dead. Also, the richer the person, the longer these things go on for so it seems that rich people are too strongly attached to their worldly goods and experience. They really should be made to have shorter funerals to force the spirit to get a move on. If it moved faster then the ghosts wouldn't have time to get up to their tricks and the relatives would be spared the expense of a long funeral where they have to feed and house all the rellies and anyone who drops by.


Oh and then there are the dogs. The neighbourhood dogs have had a couple of trips to the funeral tent where they are encouraged to bark their heads off -  as if they don't do enough of that already. Dogs bark at ghosts, don't you know? Try suggesting that they are only barking at the rats scavenging for food scraps from the food preparation tent and people will think you're mad.


You can imagine what this is doing to my delicate Hashi balance. Muscle spasms, pain, nightmares and urges to do sudden violence have over taken my life. I ransacked my apartment looking for my one pair of emergency ear plugs, which I eventually found in my sewing kit (go figure). They reduce the volume but not the irritating randomness of it all. OK, now they have switched to tuneless chanting via loudspeakers, of course. It has all the charm of a North Korean public address. If this dead guy doesn't get a move on soon, he may be joined by a few of his rellies and old boys. But OH NO,  then there would be more funerals...

it's Sunday again...

and again, I've stayed the same. It is totally my own doing i.e. eating and drinking. I think I'm just going to let it plateau for a week or 2 then get back onto it. Because I don't finish work until 7.30 or 8pm, depending on the day, I've become overly regimented about preparing food so that I eat properly when I get home and am too buggered to cook. This is back firing in a major way and instead of seeing the refrigerator purely as the thing that contains the ingredients for a dinner that will only take 10 or so minutes to prepare, I now see it as an all evening open buffet. There are only 2 and a half weeks left of term so I am going to bumble my way through to the end then get re-sorted. On the up side, next term my latest finish is 5.30pm which will make a huge different to my ability to control my foraging instincts. 

Where have you been all my life, Gazpacho?

Given my predilections for salads and soups, as well as the fact that I live where the weather gets freaking hot, you would think that I would've figured this one out before now. I'm going to blame my total inability to join these colourful dots on some kind of extended/recurring Hashi induced brain fog. Hell, I blame most other things on it, so why not?


Anyway, I have now found you Gazpacho and will never let you go. Oh dear, that sounds a little too much like the man of African extraction who followed me today and tried to initiate contact. Having had experience as the target of a Nigerian stalker when I lived in HCMC (he was well known for this and was a very abusive & dangerous person), I did not hang around to find out what this guy's intentions were. It was enough that he had turned his motorbike around, followed my tuk tuk, gotten off his bike, followed me into my faourite Korean cosmetic shop and tried to talk to me. I rabbited out the door, into the adjacent mall door, went straight up an escalator then wended my way through a couple of hundred clothing and shoe stalls, ending up in a dinky-di-doe electronics shop that sold everything from home karaoke set-ups to dust busters. I bought a cute little pair of speakers for my laptop so it was not a total bust. I then wasted a significant amount of time before heading back downstairs to the supermarket to purchase the ingredients for my cold tomato soup.


I looked online for a recipe and of course there were only about a thousand at first glance. In the end, I pastiched a couple together and hoped for the best. Here's how it went:
 1 hothouse cucumber, halved and seeded, but not peeled (use 3 small - we only get small ones here)

·     2 red bell peppers, cored and seeded (next time 1 red & 1 yellow)

·     1kg tomatoes 

·     1 red onion

·     3 garlic cloves, minced

·     1 litre tomato juice (no sugar)

·     1/4 cup white wine vinegar (next time part raspberry·vinegar part white wine vinegar)

      1 Tablespoon olive oil

·     1/4 teaspoon salt & 1/2 teaspoon pepper

      1/4 cup fresh chopped herbs - spring onions, basil, cilantro whatever is to hand...

·          Roughly chop the cucumbers, bell peppers, tomatoes (deseeded), and red onions into 1-inch cubes. Put each vegetable separately into a food processor fitted with a steel blade and pulse until it is coarsely chopped. Do not overprocess!

After each vegetable is processed, combine them in a large bowl and add the garlic, tomato juice, vinegar, olive oil, salt, and pepper. Mix well and chill before serving. The longer gazpacho sits, the more the flavors develop.

inching downwards and forwards

At least the waist is going down seeing as the scales seem to have gotten stuck again. Now that I've been writing all this down, it looks like there's a monthly pattern to the plateaus that coincide with another another monthly event. I would have thought that the waist wouldn't be a useful guide at this time due to bloating but the puffiness is restricted to the extremities; puffy eyes & feet, and I keep having to make corrections to this as my fat fingers can't get it together on the keyboard.


Weigh 81 kgs  same :(
Waist 31 inches down 1 inch  :) 


School report
My scholarship class finishes up early this week after which they will be taking IELTS exams for entrance into their various masters programmes and preparing to head to Australia for the biggest shock of their lives. Then there is the next year's lot to prepare for. Nothing like keeping busy to keep your mind off stuff.


1 more year and I think I'll be heading back to Western civilization, whatever that means, and some further education of my own.

Looking forward to a break...

We are halfway through the 3rd term and this is what is keeping me focused on the run through to the end and two weeks break. Otres Beach, Sihanoukville. A little challenging to get to in a tuk tuk but well worth it for the lack of masses of pesky backpackers, and the kiddie fiddlers who make the main beaches of Ochhueteal and Serendipity so horrible.

the Hashi's friendship circle

It's been a quiet week for me here in the virtual world as the real world somewhat overtook everything, and the inner wine and cheese hussy went on a mini rampage. 

One area us Hashis tend to make sacrifices in is our social lives. We often don't feel up to plastering on a fake smile to face the world/cocktail hour and exchange equally fake pleasantries/downright lies about how we are doing with a bunch of people who have no idea what it's like to be us. We figured out a long time ago that most people are just not interested in how we really are doing so we fake it. It doesn't take long for that to get old and we start questioning ourselves, "Are these people really my friends?" "If I didn't turn up, would most of them even notice I'm not there?" As we who have weathered this storm and become wise know, the answers to these questions are, No! and No! So we stop turning up. 

What we try to do is maintain a small inner circle of people who seem to be our real friends. Now this is when things start to turn unfortunate. A lot of us Hashis become somewhat unreliable friends. We make plans to meet up only to break them at the last minute because the aliens put their great energy sapping machine over our heads and sucked all the energy out of us in order to power their ships (I hope you are at least smiling and not reaching for the funny farm phone number). Anyway, due to some kind of energy crisis, we cancel late, we don't turn up, or we do turn up when we really should not have inflicted ourselves on good people. We've become one of those friends, which is when things get interesting/sad. We stop getting invites to things, people don't ask us over for dinner as often or they are always busy when we want to have them over. Soon, we are out of the loop and then, if we aren't careful, we won't even be able to find the bloody loop.

All this preamble is leading me into the main point of today's entry. My social life has not exactly been sizzling since I moved to Phnom Penh. It's gone from rather luke-warm in HCMC to an unlit mound of damp kindling here. So, when a socialising opportunity raised itself after work on Thursday night, I thought "What the hey, why not?" instead of the usual "No, you'll be a train wreck in the morning." I socialised, I ate a massive chicken liver salad and quaffed several glasses of rose. I felt like a train wreck in the morning. Almost the same thing happened on Friday during my long break between classes sans alcohol, and then yesterday (Sat), I had already arranged to meet a colleague to do some planning for our next year long course over a nice bottle of rose. After that the shackles came off and the inner wine and cheese hussy experienced several hours of unfettered freedom with more rose, a nice wedge of brie and a French stick.

The net result of these shenanigans is zero weight loss and zero waist loss for the week. So I'll get back on the diet horse immediately and then what? Not turn up next time? Turn up but drink soda water and make the others feel uncomfortable? Question the validity of their friendship/companionship? Wish I'd never bothered in the first place as it's all too hard to balance and retreat behind closed doors? Knowing myself, the latter but I really should try the soda water option because the place everyone goes to after work on Thursdays has really great salads.

Test results

The doc just sent through my test results. They are the most 'normalised' they've been for years so there will be no tut-tuing with meds or diet or anything else.

TSH:  2.63  ref range (0.49 - 4.67) 

T4:  17.8  (9.2 - 23.9)

T3:  3.10   (2.22 - 5.32)

It also seems that my recent energy crisis is partly due to seasonal variations and partly due to low iron levels. I didn't ask for my iron to be checked but after not being able to walk past the offal section of the meat cabinet at the supermarket due to culinary fantasies about chicken hearts and livers, and subsequently fulfilling the liver desires (in the old days, people thought that desire was generated in the liver), I feel significantly better. 

Hmmmmm, maybe I could make a low fat version of chicken liver pate? I like that idea...

weekly weigh in

This week saw me following plan to the 'T' apart from one small thing which is really one big thing in the weight loss scheme of things.


weight 81kgs = down 1kg
waist 32 inches = no change


One kilo is perfectly acceptable for the week and you don't get waist decreases every week, at least not after the initial weeks of loss where the waist reduces quite quickly. What was notable, and what I must, must, must remember (if I use 'must' a lot will it help me to remember?) is to have 2 calcium serves per day. Ideally, I would have a cottage cheese with tomato & chives snack in the morning and a low fat latte/cafe au lait made at home in the afternoon however one of these often gets skipped for various reasons. Low fat cottage cheese is horrifically expensive here so I don't or even can't always get it (you can't always get milk for some weird reason) and sometimes my job conspires to make me too busy or too tired to get to the coffee shop 10 mins walk away. Anyway, for one reason or another I have not been getting my minimum calcium everyday and According to Dr Phil, you can't lose weight without it. I've now stocked up on some individual servings of long life milk.

Does 2-1=1 hold true for the Hashi?

First things first, my TSH test was 'normal,' although the doc didn't give me the numbers so I have asked for them. I expect the lab uses the 0.3-3.0 measure as in Vietnam, and also not that long along there were no labs here so, logically (bearing in mind that logic can be circumvented in Asia), they should not be operating on the old guidelines. We shall see....


Now, getting to the mysterious equation above, there's a little back story first. The doc asked me about symptoms and I was forthcoming about how I feel like large piles of what-the-dog-did-on-the-lawn. I also pointed out that I seem to feel this bad every year at this time even though I live in the tropics. Now this is a red flag for bad thyroid doctorin.' The uninformed doctor would now be starting to narrow done which mental health issue they were dealing with and getting their imaginary prescription pad out. 


What Doctor Elise said however was circadium rhythms. These are set at a young age and persist throughout life, therefore my body is currently operating as though it is the victim of a miserable Invercargill, New Zealand winter and I have most of the symptoms of seasonal winter flu' without actually having it. That really sucks as although it's rainy season here, it doesn't rain that much and it is usually around a very pleasant 27/28 degrees with a gentle breeze. Kind of perfect, but I'm missing out on  the feel-good weather factor big time, most of the time.


So this set me off on yet another great internet search. I had not gotten far when I came across the following abstract at the Annals of Nutrition & Metabolism, which I've copied in. http://content.karger.com/ProdukteDB/produkte.asp?Doi=177254
Adult male Sprague-Dawley rats were subjected to food restriction so that they ate 65% of food ingested by control rats. While control rats had free access to food over the 24-hour period, food-restricted rats were provided with food daily at 10 a.m. The experimental period lasted for 34 days. On day 35, rats from both experimental groups were killed at 08.00, 11.00, 14.00, 24.00 and 02.00 h. Food restriction modified the circadian rhythms of ACTH and corticosterone. In addition, total circulating corticosterone throughout the day was higher in food-restricted than in control rats. In contrast, food restriction resulted in depressed secretion of thyroid-stimulating hormone and growth hormone. The results indicate that time of food availability entrained circadian corticosterone rhythm but not thyroid-stimulating hormone and growth hormone rhythms.


 Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't there an implication that if you restrict calories as you must do to lose weight, that your pituitary will reduce the amount of TSH produced so your thyroid receives less stimulus so thyroid function decreases? Isn't this the ultimate catch 22 for the Hashi who needs to lose weight? I would love to know if this has been followed up however as it was not the main objective of the research it may not have been. It was published in 1987 (so someone's known about this for a long time) and it has been cited 55 times but I have no info on the thrust of the research of those citing. This would explain A LOT!

going-to-new-doctor Hashi nerves

A trip to a new doctor is an event that fills the Hashi with a combination of hope and dread. We hope that this new doctor will be understanding & have sufficient knowledge of our weirdnesses aka symptoms; that they will be well informed by current research so able to offer us insight, rather than the other way around; that they will be open to ideas from the patient as they realise that the average Hashi spends a great time of time feeling like shite so seeks ways to feel better, and again have the capacity to guide us wisely in this rather than judging/medicating us as fruitcake hypochondriacs with depressions/psychoses/schizophrenias we don't have (of course if a person does suffer from such, they should receive the appropriate care & meds), which also happens to be what we dread on that first visit to the new doc. I have a special aversion to doctors who use the word 'believe' when they talk about Hashis as this indicates that they do not keep up to date with research, and in fact think that current research is for doctors of poor quality who don't have firmly held beliefs about Hashimoto's and are therefore liable to be swayed by results of such research. (I should pose this to my students in my critical thinking class!)


Yesterday found me tuk-tuking my way to a new doc to have my regular bloods done with all these thoughts running around in my head. There are any number of clinics I could have chosen to go to that would have been able to do the tests but I chose the main Western clinic, SOS, as I thought the chances of a 'good thyroid doc' were higher. I saw a skinny-as-a-rake, 30 something female Australian doc who was vibrant, funny, intelligent, compassionate and well educated in the thyroid department ; a Lotto winning combination in a doc if I ever saw one. She's a keeper! Results on Monday...

sorry

I know I seem totally preoccupied by my weight at the mo and I am. I have to be this focused or else I won't be able to do this. Take note all you carers-for-everyone-but-yourself out there - in order to lose weight you must become selfish and put yourself first. No one else is going to.

silly, silly me

There was I on Sunday, so preoccupied with point 5 of a kilo this and half an inch that, that I completely overlooked the fact that I had hit a milestone - 10 inches off the waist. Wahoo, congrats to me, doing a little celebration dance. And the icing on the cake is that I now officially have a healthy waist measurement. I thought I had reached that earlier but then the boffins reconvened and lowered it from 35 to 32 inches. 


Just to bring me crashing back to Earth/reality, I decided to do a BMI check. Now my beginning BMI was a whopping 40 which as you can see from the chart below (from Weight-control Information Network), put me at Obese - Class 3 and in danger of all sorts of things.
Today it's 31, just inside the Obese - Class 1 category and nudging towards the merely Overweight catergory. I can't wait/weight to get a 2 at the front of that number!
Just to give you an idea of how out of control my weight was, I used to have a BMI of 15 when I was very fit and played a lot sport and ran and did all those high energy things that now make me tired just thinking of them. 

Your BMI	Weight Category
18.5 and Under	Underweight
18.6-24.9	Normal
25-29.9	Overweight
30-34.9	Obese Class 1
35-39.9	Obese Class 2
40 and Over	Obese Class 3

I

Getting to the truth of the weighing matter

The weigh in after being back on the plan for a second week.


Weigh - 82kgs down 0.5
Waist - 32 inches down 1/2 an inch


A somewhat disappointing result as week 2 should still be pulling good numbers and I also felt in myself that I did have a good loss this week. So, what's going on? I did make some off plan choices during the week but nothing that could be said to have weight gaining properties. I may not have had enough raw food stuff as this does accelerate the loss, however I think it mostly has something to do with waking up sick this morning after oversleeping for 3 hours and having intense & intensely weird dreams. I very rarely oversleep so it's always a sign that all is not well/Aly is not well and I have always found that sickness does weird things to my weight i.e. I gain. I have wondered if this is a thyroid thing. It just has that thyroid kind of perverse logic to it.


On the bright side, things are still heading in the right direction and this week my bum fell off. That's right folks, one day I had a curvy ass bouncing along behind me, that I could literally feel bounce, and the next day, no more curvy ass. Even the mirror shows a flat posterial profile. See this is what bugs me. My ass falls off and I only lose half a kilo so my ass only weighed that much? Come on! ! I've had that thing following me around for years so I KNOW it weighed more than that. Also the half inch off the waist would indicate a real weight loss of 2 to 2.5kgs which is what I thought it would be. Herein lays a very valuable piece of advice. Don't just weigh yourself, also measure the waist as sometimes odd things are going on in our bodies which result in weight loss not showing on the scales. They aren't exactly lying, they just ain't uncovering the truth.

it's one of those mornings...

It's all soft and sunny, with a playful little breeze alternately winding itself around my ankles then flicking back the sticky-outy bits of my morning hair. People have done their tai chi, chased their dogs along the street and partaken of the morning gossip accompanied by steaming bowls of broth and noodles.The buzz saws have begun their daily scream through layers of concrete, drills make me think of the dentist, and trucks disgorge cubic metres of concrete as though it was causing something unpleasant inside. All the while hammers, mallets and sledgehammers have begun their daily dance against the structure of the house immediately behind my apartment in their ongoing attempts to take it down.


My work is shortly planning on opening a second branch in north Phnom Penh on the edge of town. Staff are currently being polled for their branch preference. Would I like to work at the new branch? Hell, yes. Apart from escaping a building with serious feng shui issues, it would mean moving to a quiet part of town or even going semi-rural. Hmmmm, dreaming of semi-rural, garden, cats & dogs and oh yes, all those big insect critters that will be chasing me all over the place once they hear there's fresh meat in town. Nothing's perfect, but it would also cost half what I pay in rent to be in the middle of the action, so bring on those big, bad bugs. I can deal.


So, something to look forward to. Not the actual move itself, doing that again so soon after an international move could be termed masochistic, but the mere idea that my poor, assaulted inner calm could potentially be matched by the outer, morning calm of my surrounds fills me with anticipation. Sounds like good therapy for my thyroid too.

end of month report card...

My students have reached the end of their first academic month and have been sent off to write their monthly reflections in their learning journals so it seems like an appropriate time for me to reflect also.


So how has it all been, what with starting a new job in a new country and all that stuff? Well, there's been the good and the bad, the highs and the lows. The lowest low had to be a schedule that stretched out, seemingly never ending, over entire days. That's been fixed (somewhat) but unfortunately the damage has been done. Once over-tired, the Hashi has limited ability to recover without taking weeks off not just work, but life itself. As a person who needs to earn a living, the compromise is to work and have no life the rest of the time and do this for months on end until you can't do it anymore and you have to quit your job. Hell, doesn't this sound exactly like the situation I've just come from? On a more positive note, my schedule should be much more doable next term - I just have to survive this one.


Even though rapid onset burnout is upon me, I have managed to get my dietary requirements sorted out and my food management has even improved a little. My biggest downfall is that when I get tired, I rely on the same old, same old dishes which are easy to chuck together and I could make in my sleep. This does lead to food boredom, not to mention general mental stagnation in the kitchen department, which is the precursor to breaking out of the plan and turning into the shameless wine and cheese hussy that I am. This time around, I have some new dishes which are almost at the I-can-make-in-my-sleep stage as well as a few tricks with flavourful sauces and salsas, some of which can be found in an earlier post. This should be just enough to keep me on the right train. 


In order to negate the aforementioned mental stagnation in the kitchen department, I have been shopping for kitchen toys. I recently bought a slow cooker - yay. I got it home and unpacked it and instead of the plain, unoffensive brushed stainless exterior the box promised, it turned out to be a puciferous shade of pinky orange. Not so yay, but hey it works - and then it goes in the cupboard where I don't have to look at it. My most recent burst of consumer activity saw me become the delighted owner of a Black & Decker MY30PGCS combined microwave, grill & convection oven. It is sleek & beautiful in a rather feline way. I want to pet it. The best thing is that it does not have miles of extraneous buttons all over it like some kind of pox on the face. Simplicity. My last purchase was a bog standard food processor. I had been making do with a blender, a mortar & pestle, & big sieve and elbow grease to get things done so this should speed up the process, make it easier and significantly reduce the splatter factor in my kitchen. A forensic scientist would have had her work cut out for her stringing the patterns of my roasted red capsicum sauce splatter.


I still have no exercise plan. I still have no information from the doctor in Ho Chi Minh City regarding the internal tear which is preventing me from exercising. Note in this month's action plan to follow this up as a matter of some urgency. Although I do no planned exercise, I now have many stairs in my life. There are about 50 to get to my apartment and at work almost the same to get to the teachers' room, then I only have one class on the same floor and the resources, photocopiers etc are all on another floor so I really have a built in step programme, especially when you add in the heavy basket of stuff that I lug to and from classes. This is also one of the reasons I feel dog-tired at the end of the day. Again, the Hashi is slow to adapt so it takes many months before one can cope with an increase in daily activity.


There are some recent indications of improvement so it's not it all gloom. On my free mornings, I have made it out for a low fat latte a couple of times, and even managed some minimal wardrobe maintenance via a tailor. This level of extra activity on a work day is pretty much unheard of for me. Also, some days I have no pain in my hands (yes that's back and no, it's not arthritis - been there, tested that) and even better I'm having the occasional day when my eyes don't feel so puffy I think I must look like someone bopped me one. Yesterday, I even felt good for a few hours...


Overall:
Weight - have lost some
Feel - still mostly like shit but have had a couple of 'good' days in the last month
To do this month:
get medical report from doc in HCMC
try to go for a walk one morning each weekend (mornings are so lovely here)
try some new yogurt based recipes for sauces, 
start driver's licence process (bouncing around in tuk tuks is quite energy depleting)
go to docs for regular TSH tests, thyroid maintenance stuff