Wednesday 9 January 2013

The Final Week....

For those that know me well you will have guessed that Vietnam was not a relaxing beach holiday, in fact what I failed to mention is that we covered quite a lot of Vietnam, from Ho Chi Minh City to Hanoi to be precise, with over 500 km of it done on bikes - definitely the best way to see a country.
But that was really just a warm-up as, in 7 days time I will be heading back out east, to cycle from Bangkok to Singapore - a few more miles this time - around 1200!
So on returning from Vietnam, my first thought was how could I train in such a short space of time for such a monumental bike ride?  Well, no doubt you will have heard of High Intensity Training (HIT) that is now becoming the norm - short bursts of flat-out training with rests in between, meaning that instead of spending hours on the bike, I can sit on the turbo trainer for less than one hour each day and hopefully get the same results.
  My aim on day one was to do 10 x 1 minute sprints - I managed 6!  On day three I managed to increase it to 8.  Today my bike has gone for a service and now needs a new wheel, so no bike for 3 days - training has all gone to pot!! 
The other thing I'm always aware of before travelling is to be sure my immune system is strong, to try to prevent foreign bacteria having an undesirable effect.  So as well as taking a probiotic and oregano oil (a potent germ killer)  for the past two weeks, I am feeding myself with all the healthy foods I enjoyed in Vietnam.  Can't wait for the Thai food to come!



Prawn and Vegetable Rice Noodles

This is really a 'make it up as you go along recipe', as any amounts of these great ingredients works.

Stir fry vegetable oil, sesame oil, chopped ginger, lemon grass, red chilli, spring onions and garlic for a couple of minutes before adding stock. Bring to a simmer and add chopped pak choi, beansprouts, cooked rice noodles and prawns.  Simmer for 5-6 minutes.

As with a lot of foods this tastes even better the following day!

Enjoy x

PS  This beautiful bowl was bought from Reaching Out in Hoi An, an enterprise that was established in 2000 showcasing high quality handicrafts made by disabled craftspeople in Vietnam

Friday 4 January 2013

New Year, no news




Don't you just know there is no real news when the year is started off with all the newspapers and reporters talking about diets - how many New Years have started off this way?  I don't know about you, but I'm just getting a bit bored with it all.  And why now?  Why not lecture us all before we embark on the enormous Christmas blow-out to save us having even more to worry about?
How many times do 'they' need to tell us that we shouldn't eat so much sugar, fat, salt, junk-food?  How about instead they focus their efforts on the people who are making the disgustingly bad for us foods, selling them at huge profits - if the bad foods were not there, we wouldn't be tempted to eat them.  And I know that from experience, having just returned from a trip around Vietnam where for two weeks I didn't eat any stodge, dairy or chocolate (because there wasn't any on offer), and didn't see one overweight person (until I spotted a couple of obese Europeans at the airport).

The traditional Vietnamese diet is very healthy, based on rice, vegetables and fish, and using steaming and stir-frying as a gentle way to cook foods, therefore ensuring less nutrients are lost through harsh cooking methods.  Their idea of fast food is a big bowl of noodle soup, with ginger, spring onions, garlic, rice noodles, beansprouts, herbs and chicken or prawns - a little different from our fast food delights.  How pleased was I to be in a country where there is no McDonalds, I was very tempted to move there permanently for that reason alone!
The Vietnamese way of eating is so natural - if they grow it or can catch it, they eat it - it makes a mockery of all our promoting of eating local and seasonal - for them there is no other way.  Unfortunately times will change and with the onslaught of overseas visitors comes our unhealthy foods - McD may not have made it there, but KFC has -  and in the last  4 years the prevalence of diabetes has increased, and with that the threat of cardiovascular disease.
One thing that was a surprise is that Vietnam is the World's largest coffee exporter, surpassing Brazil by selling 800,000 kilgrams of coffee in the first 6 months of 2012.  I'm not a coffee drinker, but those that were said it was good coffee, although the way it is served may not be to everyone's taste - very strong small cup, with condensed milk.

Of course the other way they remain healthy is that they still work in a physical job - they are working the land so are constantly on the go, and not sitting at a desk - no trips to the gym needed for them.  And hardly anybody owns a car - bikes or scooters cover the roads (quite a scary view when you are trying to cross them!) in numbers it is hard to imagine - there are reportedly 5 million scooters in Ho Chi Minh City alone!