Picture left: Trying to look angry and upset because "where in the hell are my stroopwafels and my Duyvis (!!) peanutbutter, who took a cigar without asking!"
Now 6 weeks ago a couple of Dutch friends arrived here in Patong Beach (about them more later in another 'little' contribution).
They had brought some typical Dutch products with them, which you can not find here, or at least not the desired brands and tastes that goes with it.
Among these items were peanutbutter from Duyvis with peanutchunks in them, yea yea mmmmm, they don't make them like that anywhere else in the world...you realise that when you live far away from the source. And to think I was upset when the factory, where they make this special & delicious peanutbutter, moved from my hometown Delft to some area in Rotterdam the other year. Because after having opened the first jar of peanutbutter and smelling it, I was trown back into my time. Cycling to and from Delft and allways passing the Duyvis Peanutbutterfactory and then when doing so smelling it. Or when cycling to school, and the wind was turned in the wrong way and we were crossing the canal on a little (bike and passenger) ferry you smelled it and often got hungry on the spot.... though I have to admit, on other people it could sometimes have the opposite effect, they turned green or whatever and had to try to hold on to their breakfast, lunch or dinner
So when opening this jar with yummy peanutbutter I felt great again, 3 little jars long... I managed to ate it all before they left again a short 2 weeks ago.... so in case you think bad bad bad Rob, NOPE... they were really small (my friends really also thought of my good health and diet ofcourse hence the small and not big size jars, very considerate!) and they lasted a good 4 weeks AND I managed to share some of it with my Thai friends here, who, upon discovering the special and superior flavour of Duyvis Pindakaas made a regular dive in them so in the end (first jar) I had to put the remainder on the top shelf, which they could not easily reach, haha.
I remember smiling about my sister when she was living with her family first in Nigeria and later in Indonesia and asking people when they came over for a visit (like me) to bring some of these special Dutch things with them..... lets just say that looking back I now fully appreciate her wishes, which till I started to live here I never really did and allways joked about. Still make these jokes but now about myself and not my sister anymore ;-)
Then they brought 2 chunks of OLD DUTCH CHEESE, wowwww.... so special, because old dutch cheese you can hardly not get here or its at the jewelerstore and they weigh it just like they do the gold here, haha..... so precious that I still have it safely in my fridge here and nobody dares touching it, haha. We have anice bottle of red wine and am thinking about cutting on piece when we finally start drinking that bottle... but then again, I haven't found the right musterd yet, grrrr
And the blessed souls also brought with them some fine cigars to smoke. Thank God the Thai do not appreciate a good cigar that much, except the cursed Kik, who more and more started to dip into my cigars in Holland, and imidiatly started here as well... sadly I am married to him now so I was more or less obliged to share a couple with him. Though I am convinced he doesn't appreciated them as much as I do and I suspect him of smoking them over his lungs! To make things worse the big boss of Simon Cabaret, Kiks employer saw me with one and so Pappa (thats how he is called by all who work for him) got a sampling off all the cigars I received. And to think, in Thailand and for that matter in the whole of South East Asia, one can not get decent quality dutch cigars, let alone my favorite the panatella... except those agio ones with flavourcovering, brrrrr. O and ofcourse those Cuban cigars and more of those less tasty brands, haha. There;s no cigar then a Dutch cigar! But most sad of all is the restrictions on the amount one can take with him.... hence they are now all gone, even though I didn't smoke more then one a day on average.
O and the sweethearts, they also brought with them my cheesecutter/slicer (? - however the word is correctly typed). Now I could finally in a proper way slice slices of cheese from my big multi kilo weighing dutch gouda cheese I bought before the Orange party at J&B's on the 31st of January.... bumped into that priceless (=expensive) piece of cheese while shopping for special delights for the formentioned party to celebrate our Queens real birthday!
And ofcourse the "stroopwafels" were also not forgotten, haha... though allready the next morning we discovered that also the smallest inhabitants of our house had discovered them and declared them as delicious because it was swarming with ants on, between and around them. Ofocurse I was not prepared to surrender them to the ants, as did Kik (he's crazy about them, and, as I discovered soon after, all Thai are, haha). So they suggested to put the stroopwafels in the fridge and the ants would dissapear. And so they did... their hunger for stroopwafels is not big enough for them to stomage the fierce drop in temperature .... they took the fast way out of the fridge or...... uhum.
When asking my Thai friend who visid us regular here for swimming and speaks pretty decent english why they didn't try to safe the ants from a certain freezing death, the answer was simple: we can not kill them, activly poison them, or whatever, but well, we are not oblidged to help them when they are cold or get wet feet, then its up to them if they want to stay or go.
By the way we collected more of such stories but they will service another day no doubt ;-)
Well, do I mis all these things here: yes and No. IN holland I buy a small/lttle jar of peanutbutter these last years maybe once every 3 months, because I like to think of my diet. I cut down heavily on the consumption of normal, rather fatty cheese for the same reasons and maybe once every half year I buy 1 stroopwafel, frshly prepared, on the weekly saterdaymarket, Delft.
But here, I eat it all when I can lay my hands on it.......... and happy to say, my weight is still slowly going down at on this day I weigh around 84,5 kg... a little bit low maybe and still I look like a rather big truck, tank or whatever you want to call it... as Kik says Buffalo............ and to think that my sister allways said that after returning from the tropics one always lost a few extra kilo's, several times she was right I have to admit.... but I hope this time..... I need to fit in my trousers and jacket for Jeroens wedding on the 29th of May, can not have it that it hangs around me like... O well, what the heck... we cros that bridge when we get there!!
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