Thung Wua Laen Beach - Part One

We've been at the beach for over a week now, and we've settled in a bit. We're learning ways to get some of our food needs met, thanks in considerable part to a suggestion offered by a member on the Retire Cheap.Asia forum. James is married to a Thai woman, and he shared her eating out strategy: she doesn't typically order menu items. Rather, she reads the menu to see what foods are on offer, and then orders custom made dishes based on these available items. Wow. This idea was revelatory, and has opened up otherwise unknown options for me. Now I'm able to order dishes that might typically be served with chicken, say, or fish, but specify that I want it with only vegetables. Or even with lots of vegetables: pak mak. This is only sometimes successful. Lots of vegetable doesn't seem to be a concept that Thai people readily understand or relate with. Their diet is so animal oriented, with vegetables typically being a side dish or a seeming after thought. Ironically, this is the exact misgiving that I had, months ago, when considering Latin American possibilites for travel or living. Too much meat in their diet. Who knew that Thai cuisine has the same bias. I simply assumed that being tropical, or being Asian (think Chinese or Thai or Japanese vegetarian options available in Santa Fe, for example), that vegetables and of course fruits would be major dietary components. Not so much for the vegetables. My bad for not doing my homework.

The other considerable dietary concern for me is the preponderance of white rice in Thai food. White rice. Who eats white rice any more? I haven't eaten it on anything other than a rare occasion for decades. Of course Indian food uses white rice also, but the abundance of vegetables in Indian food seems to somehow balance out some of the negatives of the white rice. White rice. Like eating Wonder Bread every day. How can anyone survive on this? Certainly people can't thrive, or be truly well. I have to find some affordable ways around this obstacle. White rice. Unbelievable. Well, not really unbelievable. It's what some billions of people on the planet eat every day of their lives. I really don't want to be one of them.

Diet is taking up a lot of my mental time here in Thailand so far. I have to think about every meal from a number of angles. Language. Communication. Ingredients. Variety, or the lack thereof. Spice. Quantity. (I'm finding that, like the quip about Chinese food says, after eating Thai food I'm still hungry and want to order another dish, which I typically do. The white rice and white noodles, having next to nothing in the way of nutritional value, also don't provide a feeling of satisfaction). As I'm writing all this I'm realizing how tiring these requirements are. Really, I wish I didn't have to think about it all so much. I'm hitting some kind of wall, just nine days into our Thailand experience.