Its being slightly more than a month since the last entry on our blog and in case you're wondering, this blog is not dead, just that the writers are lazy. Plain simple reason. In any case, I thought I should give an update for the (<10) faithful readers out there.
Trip to Siem Reap
Pau and I had a great time in Siem Reap! Of course, we visited Angkor Wat and spent 6 hours walking around and sweating away like pigs! Basically, Angkor Wat translates to 'City of Temples', in all honesty, all the temples look similar to one another, just that each was built by a different king. Our guide was awesome and provided us in great detail the history of each temple, its purpose, etc. He also knew the best spots for photographs and enthusiastically volunteered to take photographs for us, even when deemed unnecessary! I was very glad that my workouts on elliptical machine paid off as we had to climb really steep steps to reach the highest point of some temples. It made me wonder how the King used to climb the same blardy steps to pray every single day centuries ago!
On one of the evenings, we joined a food tour to sample Khmer street food and if you are a follower of Pau (@miket75) and myself (@glinrt) on instagram, you'd have known that we ate insects! Let me tell you, it wasn't easy trying to convince myself to put a cricket in my mouth. In spite of it being cooked and heavily seasoned, the cricket still looked like a blardy cricket, eyes, body, wings, legs and all. My mouth also started to develop a bitter taste, all thanks to my crazy imagination of cricket brain and juice spurting out. So, while cricket number one and I were still eye-balling each other, Pau had gamely moved on from crickets to water beetles to silkworm larva and was ready to chow down on a giant grasshopper. WTF?! I mean, this angmoh nom-ed on these insects with so much gusto that he drew the attention a group of Chinese-Indonesian family, also in Siem Reap for holiday. They were clearly very entertained by this bug-eating white man that they kept filming him eat! After he gamely finished the grasshopper (which they kindly offered), they offered him the ultimate insect, which he had to say No and drew the line. Cockroach, sized like the madagascar hissing cockroach. My goodness, that monstrosity was so disgusting, it made the cricket number one looked like candy. Hence after much deliberation and countless 'I am sorry for eating you cricket', I finally ate him. The cricket was crunchy in texture, tasted like soy sauce and left a fishy aftertaste. It wasn't so bad and I actually liked it, so much that I finished crickets number 1-30 in less than 10 minutes. Yum yum!
Since we are on the topic of eating, you might be wondering how was it like eating paleo in Siem Reap? Let me tell you, it was a big fucking paleofail. Khmer food is rather similar to Thai food, minus the spicy and plus loads more sugar! Almost all the dishes are sweet, including the thai curry and even a simple stir-fry of pork and mushroom, which tasted very weird in my opinion. The hotel we stayed at served super delicious french toasts during breakfast and was difficult to not order. Also, the mojito and baileys banana shake from the hotel's bar were also to-die-for, 1/4 in price of typical cocktails in Singapore, but 4 times the alcohol content, how to not paleofail?
Exercise
I am proud to say, I am still moving my ass 4 times a week, 3 if I am feeling lazy. Typically at the gym, I would run 5K on the treadmill in <30 minutes and spend 10 minutes on the elliptical. These days, I am training to strengthen my heart by running faster in a shorter time and spending 20 minutes on the elliptical. By doing so, I also hope to improve on my stamina, which I believe will be beneficial towards pole. This term, I am taking 2 classes: the prep advance and advance pole grooves and all together 3 dance routines! If this doesn't require stamina, I don't know what does.
Diet
Ok, this I am not that proud to say. I am back to eating more carbs than usual :( and only gotten worst now that a buddy of ours is staying with us as he is here for a 6 months contract work. I mean, this guy really really loves food and have no qualms about eating anything, as long as it makes him happy. Some evenings, he brings home all these local hawker food which I avoided the past year like plague and only to wither in willpower as I smell and see him chow down with great satisafaction. You have no idea how many paleofails I've had since he arrived. Don't get me wrong, I am not blaming him. I know I am weak, unmotivated and lack the willpower. Hence, to compensate for the paleofails, I have decided to do the Whole 30 in October 2012! Initially, I was deciding between this and Mark Sisson's Primal Blueprint 21-Day Challenge. Their fundamental concept is similar, however, the difference is, the PB 21-Day Challenge allows for moderate intake of alcohol (red wine), dark chocolate (at least 75% I reckon) and dairy (Greek Yoghurt and full-fat milk). I find the term 'moderate' rather subjective and a little risky, in a sense that it is quite easy steer off course and lose discipline. Therefore, after much thought, I decided to go hardcore with Whole 30. I will definitely write about the process here, so do watch out for truck loads of whining and self-loathing next month.
That's all for today.
-Mrs Paleoporean
