My tea strategy seemed to work so far. On one hand I am substituting wine by tea, but on the other hand I am constantly seeking other pleasures to satisfy my cravings. Ice cream, cookies, chocolate, … they all catch my attention. It is amazing how our bodies are sophisticated – we cannot cheat them.  It looks as if we had some system (our limbic part of the brain craves rewards), which taps into our head every time we decide voluntarily to give up something. This alarm switches on almost automatically, therefore we need to force it to stop. The force we use is called the will-power. Ex-smokers and drug users can tell you that their craving being activated by anything not apparently connected to their forfeited habit.
Ginger tea

Spa tunes you with your healthy self

Heading to the spa with my laptop and tons of newspapers. Having another adventurous smoothie. This time a hawaii blend. Wow. It starts to look exciting! Perhaps I can learn something about the smoothies’ provenance (pairing them with food seems impossible since they are rich like food itself). After two seconds of pondering about it, I realise that I just cannot fake it. Anything what is in the hawaii smoothie probably does not come from Hawaii and if it does, it is impossible for me to distinguish a coconut growing on one palm from the other one, not like the vine plant. Final conclusion – it tastes great, so forget about looking for a deeper meaning in anything you drink and just enjoy. The pure feeling you get at most spas is the trick though. It really helps to sit in a cosy chair, a robe wrapped around you, and a steaming-hot tea kettle a few strides away, so you can refill your cup any time you wish.

Pandan leaf Thai ice tea

Dinner at a Thai restaurant

Thai food for me is at its best with jasmine or pure black tea. The Thai people often drink flavoured iced tea like sweet black tea with condensed milk or sweet pandan infusion blended with lemongrass themselves. With their by a lemon grass, chilly or other spices seasoned food something creamy and sweet works well. The curries are so powerful and heavy that most of wines would be literarily killed by them. The sophisticated aroma of almost any wine would get lost in the ocean of coconut or any other spicy sauce in a Thai curry. I was lucky and chose only the dishes which did not tease my palette for wine or there really are not many dishes in the Thai cuisine that are better with wine rather than a glass of water, tea and the local Singha beer. (The exceptions are some stir-fried dishes that pair well with a sweater Riesling or aromatic wines from Alsace)
Day four goes on.