So what about the travelling thyroid thing then?

It's one thing to go gallivanting around S.E. Asia when you are fit and healthy, but it's another thing entirely when your travelling companion is Hashi Moto. There are some positives such as the fact that you're not working, but this also means lack of a healthy routine. I am not a routine person (either way you read that!), but one of the sharpest weapons in one's armoury against thyroid disease is a good routine. Routine helps reduce the fall-out from fuzzy brain, helps in remembering to take meds at the right time, and helps give structure and control. 


With my regular routine shot to bits, diet and exercise have become something of a concept rather than a practice. I am sad to say that since Cambodia, SE Asia has done miserably in the salads and fresh vegetable department (see entry Deep Fried in Malaysia). The dairy department has been abysmal as well. Since arriving in Singapore, everything on the food front has improved one thousand percent with the notable exception of salads. I've been to several rather nice restaurants whose salads descriptions have fired my imagination and my taste buds only for the first to be let down and the second, assaulted. Case in point: a pesto seafood salad with Dijon mustard dressing. What could go wrong with that, I thought innocently. First there was no Dijon dressing. Instead it was a piquant and spicy, as in chili spicy, dressing. Note that these things do not go with pesto. Big flavour grouping eff-up. Oh, and what really killed what had started out as a great idea for a salad was the MSG that ripped the surface off my tongue.


Most places I've been have not been conducive to pleasant walking with the exception of Singapore which is very walker friendly. The past few days I've been walking and walking for hours but because of the sudden onset of exercise, I've aggravated some of my bung bits. At the beginning of the trip I had loose cartilage bits in my left knee causing pain, general pain in lower left leg from pin and a burst left hip muscle which had been very painful. By Bangkok, I had aggravated an old rotor-cuff shoulder injury on the left side, then receive trauma to the lower left back through a violent bit of massage. All in all, the left side of my body was f****d and I had a lot of territory to cover getting on and off  trains with some seriously heavy bags. I've managed, but only because I am now a lot stronger than I was. Even a couple of years ago, I could not have coped with a fraction of this. The healing process for muscular things seems to take longer for us Hashis, so it's a been a slow improvement but I am looking forward to some days at sea so I cannot walk very far.


The worst aggravation for me by far has been the complete disintegration of time. For the past four years I've woken between 5 and 6am without fail. Suddenly I started sleeping to mid-day and couldn't get to sleep at night. The fuzzy wuzzies came back. This probably contributed to my negligence in getting my laptop stolen and definitely to loosing my passport in Penang (thank God for nice people who find things I've lost and hold them for me as I retrace my steps looking for them). I pulled out every trick but nothing was working. Part of the problem was the change in daylight hours. Dawn had moved from 5am to 7am and this small movement threw me off completely. Then there was also the issue of a minor time zone change by one hour. You would think one hour would be a piece of cake but not for this Hashi girl. I have a problem with crossing time zones. It was actually the time shift on a flight from Italy to New Zealand some years ago that kicked off my first Hashi's symptoms, although at that time I didn't realise this. Yet another reason why I prefer slow travel. Anyway, I have started to shift back to a more normal day since arriving in Singapore. Taking the night train and therefore being woken  at 6am for border procedures helped to reset the clock, as well as staying in a dorm room with Asian girls who like to get up early. Its a slow and slightly painful readjustment but worth it.


So what coping mechanisms do I use to get me through all that pain and confusion? First and foremost, don't go at things the Lonely Planet way. That's for people who leap out of bed running after 14 hour days of touristic activities and nights of binge drinking. Do your own research first. I find expat blogs and local forums to be the best sources of insider knowledge of a place. Choose what you want to do wisely and realise you can only do 1 main thing per day or even every 2 days. Take the time to explore your chosen point of interest slowly and thoroughly. Take lots of pics. Chat to the locals. This didn't work in Thailand as they were only interested in you when you had dollars in your hand, but in Malaysia and Singapore I've found many people quite ready to pass the time of day chatting to a stranger. Don't worry if you can't do everything you want to do, it'll still be there next year and if you still have a burning desire to see it you can come back. Other things, don't drink much alcohol or none...it's cheaper this way too. Do pampering activities like massages, pedicures and shampoos especially as these are all cheaper in Asia. Take cooking classes where you can find them but do check out the physical barriers. I cannot climb tight spiral staircases. I seem to lose the neurological impulse that commands my left leg to move so I have to go up backwards on my bum. Very embarrassing. People watch. Take the time to be observant. You can learn more about a place spending a quiet couple of hours this way than running around like a Lonely Planateer.


Right, I have to go repack my bags and check out. Next time, I'll be in Oz which reminds me. I'm going to have to rename this blog... 

Pics

Unfortunately most of the pics took between Cambodia and Kuala Lumpur were on the notebook that was stolen, however I had put some on facebook. Here they are along with more from Malaysia and Singapore.


Koh Kong to Penang
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=322469&id=531510481&l=acca32c71a


Singapore 1
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=326433&id=531510481&l=306fb6d16e


Singapore 2
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=326918&id=531510481&l=b5ac017033


Singapore 3
http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=326995&id=531510481&l=db021f9e32

Deep fried in Malaysia

I'm well tired of people telling me that the food in Malaysia is awesome. There is more to food than gobs of fat, gobs of rice, gobs of MSG, a deepfryer and sugar dusting powder. Everything is fried. My chicken breast last night had been biffed in the deep-fryer. Rice is fried in great gobules of fat in a wok. Satay? Deep fried! Salad? Fried shit all over it, not to mention great gobulous smears of processed mayonnaise. Oh and it's cabbage, not lettuce (remember: cabbage is a punishment, not a vegetable). I am fried from trying to find AN INGREDIENT. 


An ingredient is something that is freshly prepared and/or harvested that has had a little something something done to it to enhance certain of its natural properties. That little something something often requires technique. It may require a little of another ingredient or two, but the main ingredient should always remain the star of its own show -  not the fucking deepfryer!


In case I wasn't convinced that this is a food wasteland, I can't even get a pot of frigging green tea. What you get instead is instant tea with sugar added. You cannot stop them adding it. They do not know how to make it without it. I take my coffee black with no sugar but this is the land of 3-in-1. When you find some real coffee and if you can stop them putting in sugar syrup, they try to spoon in honey or dump in packet sugar. I've taken up diet coke or grabbing a coffee at McDonald's. McDonald's is the equivalent of diet food here. Besides that, the coffee is actually quite decent. 


Even things that are done well here are fatted to death. Gravies and sauces are where the flavours are if you're lucky. If not, it will be brown sludge with gobs of MSG to burn out your taste buds. In a sauce there will generally be an ingredients to oil/fat ratio of 1 to 3 on a good day. On a bad day, make your after dinner reservation at the local heart unit before eating. 


On a positive note, I had the best Thai green curry of my life in a market in KL. It was the sauce. Balanced flavours, unfortunately the only occurrence of this phenomenon in the country, and a smooth as silk sauce that was spicey but not make-you-gag spicey (because it was smooth). The treatment of the eggplant could have been improved but on the whole, a lot of Thai cooks could learn a thing or three about not splitting the sauce from these guys.


Now some might say, don't eat the fatty food. Unfortunately, there is very little else to eat. I'm staying in an area with every kind of food available from street food to award winning restaurants, and I've been through the whole range. The best meal I've had was half a dozen natural New Zealand oysters with two glasses of prosecco. Hard to fuck up really, but putting thick chunks of lemon on top of those fresh, fresh, salty, succulent babies is the beginning of a fuck up. I saved them by my quick actions of whipping the lemon off them pronto, thus reducing the acidic cooking process which had already begun. The prosecco was lively.


I can't say the same for the people. About being lively that is. Although generally nice, and often quite chatty there is a general lack of energy amongst the populace. Not surprising given the diet. I'm having visions of all their poor livers, kidneys, intestines and hearts encased in fat, struggling to do their processing, hardening from the abuse, the life being squeezed out of them by all that fat squeezing into all the nooks and crannies. And they are big people. Every shape and size but mostly fat, fat, fat. Even some clothes shops have mannequins that are bigger than me. This place is a complete fatmare.


So all in all, I am not having a good time with my food. I have even been making my own salads  sometimes but that's a little difficult with the whole chopping veges on your lap in your teeny tiny seedy hotel room with no refrigerator. Tonight I leave for Singapore. Again, everyone raves about the food, but will I be able to find what I'm looking for - fresh, tasty, lively without the fatty crutches of a poor cook?

my kingdom for...

...my pics. The ones that were in the hard drive of my notebook that was stolen the other day. I don't want to talk about it other than to say it was my own stupid fault, but the thief did have size 100 balls. The thing that pisses me off the most is that he got zip from all the work he put into taking my picture storage unit. First and foremost, it was password protected so it can't be resold. The next option is to pull it apart and sell the card but when I got it 2 years ago, it was basically a bin end item verging on the obsolete so now it's pure hamster & wheel technology. Pigeon post looked like a pretty good option by comparison. So I was left with zip and he was too. I hope karma is swift and powerful and involves gangrene of the testicles.

It's a crazy old world out there...

Something that most of the places I've lived or travelled in Asia have in common is the lack of foreign nutters. I do recall one nutty Canadian in South Korea who lived in the building opposite me and would hurl eggs and abuse at the locals from the 8th floor and get himself arrested from time to time, but he had been the only stand out - until now that is.


It started in Bangkok, of course. She was more a case of Alzheimers and being German rather than anything worthy of an institution. She really wasn't able to manage very well by herself and had been getting along by asking people to help her. Being Thailand, the locals were most definitely not up to being helpful, except for when they were helping themselves to her cash via rip offs, so she would pick out single female travellers. One night I helped her find the guest house that the local agent booked her into. It was a hell of a hunt, through unlit areas, and up and down narrow dark alley ways. Why on earth the agent booked her into that particular guest house, I don't know, but maybe I can guess (the kickback). Anyway, it took about 40 minutes at night to get her to her place and then I had to back track by myself in the dark. I had my best 'fuck off and leave me alone' attitude on as well as a quite a pace. One pair of young guys gave me the once over but I probably looked like hard work and god knows, the locals there don't like hard work when there are plenty of easier pickings around.


The next one definitely came into the category that requires emergency intervention. I didn't have the pleasure of meeting him, only the pleasure of watching his arrest. I had found myself a room for the night at the Civillian's Inn in Love Lane, Georgetown. Despite the name, Love Lane is not a street of brothels, but does have some 'character' hostels and guest houses in the old shop houses. I was chatting to an interesting young Turkish guy who has lived in some of the more challenging parts of Asia, when a very drunk, crazy white guy on a cycle rode into a group of tourists promenading the street. They abused him, he abused them back. Then he took up residence on the front porch of the shop house opposite where I was sitting and proceeded to yell abuse and nutter insights for 15 minutes. The home owner arrived but the guy wouldn't leave and wouldn't let the home owner in. Then the police arrived. The locals all looked very uncomfortable with what was going on including the police. All credit to the police, they handled the guy quietly and calmly and finally took him away in the police van. In other places in Asia, someone would have just dragged him down the alley a bit and stuck a knife in him. 


The next nutter came along 5 minutes later and sat down at the table with me and the Turk. He was clearly drunk and, although much more low key than the last guy, had punched the receptionist at the guest house the night before so I was wary of him. Every couple of minutes he would ask me where I was from. I would tell him NZ, then he would go on about Europe being a depressed hole. This went on like it was ground hog day. I didn't bother correcting him on the whereabout of NZ and retreated inside. He was actually staying in the dorm at my hostel but later that evening was forcibly ejected. I didn't see but did hear the process and it seemed to take a few guys.


There was actually a 3rd one in that same hour but this was the more slippery, less easy to pin down sociopath. Another guest of the establishment, he was a small, old white man with a penchant for aggression and lechery. I moved to a better part of town in the morning.


To be fair, these kind of events are apparently rare, and the hostel owner and staff were fabulous. It's not their fault that foreign fuckwits who are incapable of taking responsibility for themselves decide to thrust their rather large personal problems onto strangers in countries that are not their own.