No really, its hot

Had my first run in with minor heat exhaustion. One of the symptoms is a headache, so its actually pretty easy to spot when its happening. This was not due to over-exertion. We walked about 15 minutes to lunch, ate, walked 15 minutes back. Then rested for a couple hours before going to the pool. Then we were at the pool for maybe 45 minutes. And that was enough to do it.

Also, we’d been applying sunscreen and drinking water atheistically by which i mean, pragmatically and in a fashion supported by evidence and reason, so that wasn’t the problem either.

It’s just really damn hot here.

yes, i did bother to change the css for my blog just for the above sidenote

The good news is that, rather unsuprisingly, Liza was prepared for such an occasion with oral rehydration salts (ORS). The bad news is that these are incredibly foul tasting. Something in the sulphory, rotten egg family of things. We were able to make this palatable by mixing in just a bit of gatorade and then a bunch of lime juice. The ORS had a suprisingly quick effect and I was feeling basically ok before the night was over.

We hypothesize that we’re just losing a lot of more electrolytes through sweat than we realize. Including, but not limited to when we’re sleeping. So even thoughwe’re drinking lots of water, its not sufficient to ward off heat exhaustion.

but i’m happy that i did, and i probably won’t be so distractedly entertained by it in the future

Our new plan is just to include some ORS in our daily routine as a preventative measure. Perhaps in a week or two if our bodies have adjusted, we’ll back off this precaution, but seems the prudent course for now.

… but who knows…

In other news

Finally found some vegatarian thom kha:

soup

It is comparatively much easier to be vegetarian here than in Japan. In Japan we had to seek out specifically vegetarian restaraunts much of the time. Here, we can eat pretty much anywhere. Our requests for no meat have been always understood (and implimented), which has been quite nice. One thing that we didn’t expect given the amount of tofu that is consumed here is that it is not common to understand that we would like tofu in place of meat. We have a favorite place about a 15 minute walk away that does, so its easy to get things like hot basil leaf tofu:

tofu Which was the first actually spicy dish that anyone has made for us. Also had some coconut juice:

coconut