Monthly Archives: March 2012

Celiac, the great leg workout.

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Oh. Hi squatty potty.
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I’d forgotten about you. You see, I have a bad experience in past with a squatty potty. When I was 15 I took a train from Hong Kong to Beijing. The toilet on the train was a squatty potty – with a direct exit route to the train tracks below. I wore flip flops in – you wouldn’t dare go in barefoot (imagine people on a bumpy train SQUATTING over a hole? If you thought men’s bathrooms were gross on stable land, try checking out a bumpy train hole. Gross.) Anyway – upon exiting the restroom, as I lifted my left foot over the hole in the floor, my flip flop fell off. 1 – how does that happen? 2 – OMG now I had to hop out of the bathroom on one foot because otherwise my other foot might have fallen off from disease had it touched the ground and 3 – well, I just really hope some child in China was looking for a left shoe. Maybe they were missing their left shoe, or perhaps there was a child with only one left foot. I don’t know. I can only hope my $1.99 Old Navy flip flop didn’t go to waste.

Anyway. As much as I love to travel, I’ll admit that these days it freaks me out a little. Not enough to NOT travel, of course. But not only is finding food is hard – dealing with the aftermath of getting sick downright sucks in a foreign country. Because I’m just freaking convinced that the founder of the squatty potty NEVER had diarrhea. Or maybe he never even pooped. Dude (I’m convinced it was a dude – no woman would create something so ridiculous and uncomfortable) must have had regular bowel movements every day of his life and never thought about the people that spend a little extra time on the toilet. I mean seriously.

One night we went to dinner and it was pretty good. Until I realized that they gave me the wrong dish – the dish that was meant for my gluten eating friend. Oops. All I have to say is all hail the pepto bismol. I walked my fastest walk back to the hotel and was thankful that at least the hotel had real toilets for us that prefer to sit while spending time in the restroom. (While playing Draw Something or Words With Friends on our iPhone. And now all of my friends are going to have the awesome vision of me on the toilet every time a notification pops up that they have a new drawing. Muahaha.)

The good news is about those squatty potties? They’re great for your thighs and butt. It’s like a mini workout every time you go to the bathroom. Because you can’t use a squatty potty without squatting… my personal trainer Linda would be so proud! ;)

So, China airlines reads my blog.

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Well, that’s what I am going to tell myself since on my flights home from Thailand I didn’t get *any* rice cakes. Not one on all three meals. On my gluNten free meals. Ah, Asia, I love you.

AND I got a piece of gluten free bread with my dinner. On one of my posts previously, someone asked how I knew the difference between regular & GF bread on a plane (from this post here)… let me tell you. If you have had gluten free bread EVER in your life – you’d know the difference with the piece they gave me. When 2 pieces weigh a lb combined, are not fluffy at all, and are packaged in plastic… you just know. When all else fails – have a gluten eating travel partner try it. If they spit it out – you’re golden. One day maybe Udi’s will be available on board but until that day… it’s not hard to tell GF bread from the gluten filled stuff.

Ok but seriously, I love Asia. I visited Hong Kong & Beijing when I was a teen and was itching to get back. Thailand… how can you even describe it? We stayed in central Thailand and I so want to go back to both the north & south – darn the vacation time required! I wasn’t entirely sure how traveling in Asia would be with my Celiac, though – both international trips I’d done since my diagnosis were in Europe where I never found someone that didn’t speak English. While the Thai diet is heavily rice centered, that darn pesky soy sauce finds it’s way in pretty often. So I printed out a travel card written in Thai from here:
http://www.celiactravel.com/cards/
More like I printed out a few dozen – 4 to a page – just in case. I smiled stupidly at every Thai waiter and handed them this card. Most of the time they took a minute to read it and then pointed at one or two items on the menu to suggest what was already gluten free – some took the cards back to the chef… and overall I had a great experience. Yes, I got sick a few times. That happens when eating out so often for me, anyway, due to the cross contamination factor. Boo – and only once did I have a mix up with my food (I’ll blog about that one in a separate post. Because you all want to hear about me getting sick in more detail, right?)

Here’s a little proof that I really did order and eat some pretty darn tasty stuff while I was there:

Chicken in a coconut curry sauce. Cost? Around $2.

Chicken in a coconut soup. Hey, I like coconut.

Thai iced coffee. Less than $1 to buy off the street vendors. Mmm I want to go back right now and buy some more Thai iced tea. So good!

Ice cream. A fully balanced meal.

And alcohol. Because that’s all that really matters on vacation. Give me some rice, ice cream, and mixed drinks and I’m a happy vacationer. In fact, for this featured meal, that’s all I had. Ha!

And ok, it might almost be embarrassing how many self portraits I take with my iphone. But, I tell myself it’s for my blog. So these photos are for you, dear readers. All 3 of you. ;)