First of all, before we talk about who is lean, what is lean and most important why lean I want to point out that here in Thailand I’m really not considered short. In fact there are many here shorter than me. I mean, I wouldn’t get too carried away and say that I am considered tall here, but certainly not short. I don’t know why it took me 42 years to come here. I also can’t understand why they give visas to all those tall Nordic women who mess up all that tall reputation I am trying to gain here. Annoying.
But we talked about living lean. Simple. Little.
Thai people, well, they’re small. And accordingly – their portions are small too. Their yogurts are small, supermarket food packs – small, even their spoons are small. And with a small spoon and a small bowl, how much can a person eat ..? Even if he is not short. Come on, my heart burns calories just on the number of times I have to bring the spoon with the cornflakes back to my mouth.
And I do not go hungry here. Maybe it’s the humidity. Maybe it’s connected to the simplicity that’s happening here for itself. Maybe it’s because we do a lot of slow walks around. By the way, have you noticed how children always, but always, cut the walking trail across to the other side, zigzagging all the time, slowing down and speeding up randomly and generally walking right in front of your feet or between your legs, never in a straight line? What’s wrong with you guys ??? Never mind. So you do not get hungry here. You eat some cereals or yogurt with fruit in the morning, smoothie in the afternoon, a Thai meal (small portions, remember ..?) in the evening, share a Banana Loti or a cocktail or local beer on the terrace.
And after a week and a bit, the dishes served do not seem small to us anymore. They seem to us reasonable. It seems pretty logical to us to nicely clean the plate in the one meal a day we eat, and not order any first courses, and be happy for what we have. Seems logical to throw a small bag of trash every couple of days, but when I think about all those quantities of garbage we produced back home, I feel like crying.
Here in Koh Tao, we live in a rather large type of compound that belongs to the Dive Center where The One does his Dave Master internship and our boys are doing an Open Water divers course. The dive resort is called Ban’s, and it dominates a very large area of the village called Sairee, where we are located. It’s a large resort with two pools for swimming and dive training, restaurant, laundry service, travel agency, scooter rentals, shops, supermarkets, and of course at the end of the campus feeling completely surrounded by the jungle – our bungalow, which going in or out of requires a small trek. And Ban’s… they are strong in the recycling business. They have gray water and brown water and recycle almost everything they consume. We contribute our modest part by consuming very little and hardly throw any food in general. Every day we pass through one of the supermarkets here, buy what we need for the day – some fruit, bread, tuna, water (huge bottles of 6 liters), some yogurt, some biscuits for children, and it’s amazing, we do not throw any food at all. This morning I threw a piece of bread that was invaded by ants (how did they enter the package?!), and it was really weird.
Bottom line ..? Yes, girls and boys, I lost weight.
