With Gratitude...

We’re on Koh Chang now, a little Thai island near Cambodia. After arriving and spending our first night in a slightly bizarre place here, where the windows didn’t open, the air conditioner blasted smoke and I woke up with a cat next to me in bed...we moved on today ;) The universe graciously led us instead to a simply GORGEOUS raw food/health spa resort...WOW...green juices, a whole raw food menu, colema boards in the bathrooms, salt water swimming pool, massage & steam room onsite, meditation/yoga classes, free bikes to borrow, videos such as ‘What The Bleep’ and ‘The Secret’ showing daily – this place is a modern raw foodist’s dream ;) YUM. The eatery here was actually featured as one of the ‘Top 50 Restaurants in the World’, in the international magazine Restaurant. Yeeeee-HAH :)
I’ve been reflecting a lot the last few days on how Thailand often appears to me like a country caught between ‘tradition’ and a more ‘Western’ culture that seems to permeate in many-fold manifestations... It is a land RICH in interesting raw foods, for example – durian, mangosteen, rambutan, coconuts, various greens and so on, yet there are shops everywhere RAMMED with ‘plastic’ packet foods, candies, cakes and so on. I ventured into one supermarket to discover an ENTIRE AISLE of boxed baby milk/formulas… :O Literally DOZENS of different pasteurised, packeted, homogenized, filler-packed brands of expensive, mucus-forming cow’s products to clog your kids up with. Shocking. Familiar big-name company logos abound and there seems to be a national fascination with plastic bags. Pretty much anything you purchase will be handed to you in a plastic bag, even if it’s already IN a plastic bag to begin with... ??? ;) People even drink their SODAS from plastic bags...lol...vendors like to keep hold of the glass soda bottles, to send them for re-filling (hmmmm...nice, kind-of ;), so they pour out the customer’s sugary acid-forming concoction into a little plastic bag, throw in some ice and a straw and off they go...quite remarkable... At the same time, you’ll see roadside stalls and markets STACKED with fruit, everywhere you go. One thing I personally find a little challenging to integrate is that in the fresh street markets, there rarely seem to be specific areas set up for different kinds of food products, e.g. a veggie stand area, a meat/fish area etc – everything is just intermingled all over the place, so in-between the luscious jack fruits and mangosteen, one readily comes face-to-face with live frogs, eels, crabs and so on, along with various entrails and untold macabre scenes (to me), from which I avert my eyes and nose...just really not my kind of thang ;) Hence I’m feeling very grateful and blissed to have landed up today in a place that serves yummy, organic raw vegan foods and juices and seems to be more eco-focused than other places we’ve stayed so far...yummm... :)

on April the 30th I had:

1 quart water
water of 2 young coconuts
big bag of rambutan with a few pieces of papaya, jack fruit and a lady-finger banana – YUMMMMMMM :)
2 cups water
water of 2 young coconuts with wheatgrass powder
6 durian pods, 2 mangosteens and 1 rambutan
2 cups water
little bowl of 2 mushed lady-finger bananas with spirulina and a small handful of pine nuts/goji berries mixed in = yummm :)
1 quart water

on May the 1st I had:

1 quart water
water of 2 young coconuts with wheatgrass powder
a handful of rambutan, 4 mangosteen a lady-finger banana
2 cups water
smoothie of coconut meat, lady-finger bananas and spirulina
2 cups watersmoothie of coconut water/meat, leftover dried mulberries, karengo seaweed and spirulina – YUMM :)
1.5 quarts water

Some of you wrote to say that you had difficulties with the links for the ChiDiet site that I posted a couple of days ago – I’m sorry to hear that. If you would still like to enter the giveaway contest to win one of the two free ‘Raw Food Home Study’ kits, you can click HERE.
Better get over there quick though, methinks, as I suspect they’ll be choosing the winners soon...

on May the 2nd I had:

1 quart water
water of 3 young coconuts with green powder
bowl of smoothie: banana/coconut meat/spirulina, with karengo seaweed on the side ;)
1.5 quarts water
½ a small durian, 6 mangosteens, a lady-finger banana and a dragon fruit
1.5 quarts water


on May the 3rd I had:
1 quart water
water of one BIG young coconut with spirulina
big bag of rambutan
glass of greeeeeeeeeen juice
shared meal of raw dishes – lasagne, veggie terrine, nori rolls, followed by banana ice cream with cinnamon/honey sauce = YUM
1 quart water
INTENSE shot of gotacalla juice (said to be GREAT for aiding memory/brain-function)
Yum bowl of blended bananas/coconut meat with spirulina and a little karengo seaweed
1.5 quarts water

BTW, for anyone who has never seen the Monarch and myself speak in public and is maybe wondering what our events are like, here are a couple of sweet little recent reviews from 2 yumsters who attended our Melbourne event:

Here’s a snippet from Helena’s post:

"When I first heard that Matt and Angela were coming to Melbourne I did what most people do and googled them. After watching Matt’s vids on YouTube, and reading about Angela on her blog. I was doubtful about spending an entire afternoon listening to a young guy from California, sporting dreadlocks and a tanned body, talk about his great adventures eating raw. Angela; well, her story sounded good, but I didn’t have a weight problem and have always been wary of D*** word..."

You can find out what she thought of our talks and read her whole in-depth piece HERE:

It was lovely to meet Joanne from RawMom.com too at this event – here is a snippet from her write-up:

“The afternoon was utterly inspiring. Matt was down-to-earth, intelligent and intense, telling us of his experience and that of others, but also going into the science behind eating raw. He didn’t hold back from frank discussion about – ahem – colonics and gas, and other not-oft-mentioned unmentionables! Angela glowed (as evidenced in the photo of her and I), and gave a personal account of the physical and emotional changes she underwent on her raw journey, during which she lost 160lbs/72kg and gained a whole lotta health and happiness. Gosh, they’re really a lovely couple, and I just love that they want to make the world a better place.”

Awwwwww ;) You can read all of Joanne’s musings HERE:

THANKS to you both for sharing your reflections, lovely ladies ;) ...and hopefully one day we will connect with YOU too, dear reader, at another venue in space and time, if thou dost desireth it...

One love,
Angelalalalalaaaaaaaa. xxx