After our busy two weeks in the north, we flew down to southern Thailand to do some island hopping, relaxing on the beach, for Molly to do some diving and the Full Moon Party. It was late when we landed in Phuket and well after midnight when we arrived at our hotel the Kata beach area. We chilled out with some beers from the mini-bar then headed off to bed, leaving us one full day and essentially one night to explore Phuket. Early the next morning we headed off to find some breakfast and to check out the beach. The beach is very nice and our hotel - only two years old, having been re-built after the 2004 tsunami, was absolutely spectacular -- definitely 5-star.
And yet, we really didn't like Phuket; especially not the Patong beach area (luckily, we were not staying there). For one thing, it seemed kind of seedy and sordid, but on top of that, we found Phuket more expensive than Bangkok and Chiang Mai (i.e. 80 Baht for Chang beer when we were used to paying only 30-50 Baht!).
We weren't super thrilled with the restaurant scene but after seeing some advertisements for "Two Chefs Bar and Grill" we decided to treat ourselves to a "nice" dinner.
We had a primo seat right at the front where we were able to watch the excitement of a hydro power repair complete with a Thai employee, wearing flip flops (obviously ... the only footwear in Thailand), smoking a cigarette (of course ... eeevvveryyyone smokes in Thailand), with only two tools in his hand (why not? ... what else could a Thai electrician possibly need), alone in a cherry picker (poor guy ... all the other employees seemed to disappear as soon as he hopped in the bucket), to negotiate the some three hundred power wires strung overhead. Traffic was stopped but otherwise, the whole production was very nonchalant. Many tourists stopped to watch and/or take pictures.
this picture is actually in Koh Samui but you get the idea
same same in Phuket
For dinner, I chose the pork tenderloin with cashew nuts and rice. My cashew pork was excellent. It was super spicy in a deliciously rich and flavourful sauce. It was very good and I'm glad I stuck with the Thai rather than the Mexican side of the menu, which was my second choice.
Molly picked the prawns in lemongrass with tamarind. She really liked it as well.
This was the fanciest restaurant we had been to in our time in Thailand and the chefs clearly were interested in the full upscale dining experience and the plating of the dishes was really superb. The entire restaurant was filled with tourists (mostly Eastern Europeans); I don't believe we saw one Thai person dining there -- and Phuket is a tourist/beach destination for Thai people too.
The next stop on our island tour was Koh Phi Phi. This is a short ferry ride (2 hours-ish), after a fairly lengthy van ride (more than 1 hour) to the pier. We arrived at the pier to find a huge line up of people already boarding the ferry. We came to learn that the Thai van/bus/ferry/long boat transit system is actually very well organized ... they just don't explain anything to passengers. After a couple of more trips we were well-seasoned to the flow of the pick-ups, stickers and ties marking your destination and bags, boarding the boat and dropping your bags, as well as the unique off-loading of the bags at your destination; but for the first time or two it can be frustrating.
at the pier at Koh Phi Phi - after the ferry and awaiting the
long boat taxi to our resort -- yes the blue dot sticker on my boob
indicates I'm going to Koh Phi Phi ...
the long boat "taxi stand" at Tonsai village in Koh Phi Phi
We appreciated the chance to decompress in a rustic setting; there being only one restaurant at the resort also meant we got to know our servers quite well. One young woman had a girl-crush on Molly and pretty much hung out at our table whenever we were in the dining area -- unfortunately her English was almost as non-existent as Molly's Thai was, so these visits became somewhat awkward and uncomfortable at times. In any case, all the staff were really sweet and immediately after ordering our first beers on day one, we instantly became known as the "two more Leos?" ladies which we were offered relentlessly.
Ice (Molly's girl-crush), Molly, Donut, Nam, Rem and me
Western style breakfasts were not spectacular so we started to eat early lunches which was much preferable; generally of the sandwich and fries type of meal with a shake or fries for a snack in the afternoon. Dinners, though, we stuck with authentic Thai food. Generally we found the Thai food quite good and flavourful but definitely lacking spice to our taste. On our last evening, Molly splurged with a fancy cocktail (I stuck with the Leo .. or as our server, Donut, called it: 037 ... how the label looks when it's turned upside down).
seems like the Leo's are kicking in!
fancy drink for a fancy woman!
For our final dinner, I had the Panang curry. It was quite different than the Panang curry we made in cooking school - it had a much more Indian flavour to it, much more similar to the Massaman curry that we learned about. It was flavourful and delicious though - and this is part of the excitement of Thai food: everyone has their own personal spin on how authentic and traditional dishes are prepared.
Molly had the Koong Ob Woonsen which is a shrimp noodle dish baked in a clay pot. She thought the flavours were good but because it was baked and there was not a lot of sauce on it, it was a bit dry.
After Koh Phi Phi we took the ferry to Krabi. It is about a four hour ferry ride after about 30 minutes on the long boat to get to the pier -- ultimately our next destination was Koh Samui but we were not sure if it would be too far to travel in one day; hence a one-night stop over in Krabi. We spent the day relaxing and updating blogs, emails, etc. and the vast majority of our one evening there was in a reggae bar where we met a young couple from Britain/Poland and then later grabbed a young Spanish woman to join us too. We were having such a great time with them, we hit the "Top Up" rooftop patio/bar on top of the funky "Pak Up" hostel.
The "Top Up" patio was packed with young backpackers, it was totally buzzing with great music from a (quite good) live band and we continued to pound back many many beers with our new friends till I don't recall how we managed to get back to our hotel. From the street below, you would never know this was the happening place to be, as Krabi seemed like a very sleepy little government town to us.
It was a really fun night, and it was nice to get to see what Krabi has to offer (basically a giant crab sculpture and elephant street lights), but in future we would probably just go directly to Koh Samui (and in light of the fact that I was feeling pretty rough after the night we'd had, it might have been a better choice -- but then again we would have missed a really really fun night out!).
There is also a huge 'bar district' (for lack of a better term as it's unlike any bar districts I have known in Canada) where we found plenty of warnings about not bringing in guns, no violence, no drugs, etc. so it seems Samui may have a bit of a rough underbelly too. We strolled the bar area by day and found it very calm but once night comes it is transformed. It was totally C-R-A-Z-Y complete with laughing gas balloons, "blue man" full body stocking'd dancing guys, plenty of working girls, lady boys, a "Russian" show (not really sure what that entails but the women promoting the show were thinner than my left leg and had shoes no less than 8 inches high!!!), as well as Cabaret (read Drag Queen) shows and a tiny gay village (well really a small alley street).
the Cabaret
The city offers lots and lots of choices for restaurants, shopping, massages (though pricier than Chiang Mai). The resorts on the beach set up tables complete with candles and lanterns for dinner; during the day you will find lots of beach vendors selling every kind of beach wear, food, fruit, and jewellery imaginable. You don't even have to get up off your beach chair.
all Ronald McDonald's in Thailand are in prayer pose ...
what do you suppose he's praying for?
We went to the biggest reggae bar you can ever imagine taking up, literally, four corners of a city block ... and at one point Molly and I were essentially the only people in the whole place except for the staff. We were told we'd come too early (at 9:30pm) but we didn't think we could hang out till the crowds supposedly rolled in at midnight. There were a few people trickling in now and then, but with the price of beer very high and the location a decent distance from our hotel we decided to head back to the main street area where there were more options and cheaper drinks.
restaurant set up on the beach for dinner - beaucoup d'ambiance!
This was our first dinner in Koh Samui at the "Your Place" restaurant. It very lightly drizzled while we were eating dinner but not enough to make us move or spoil our dinner. There was nice music playing and all these lanterns, even some lucky Chinese lanterns being set off. For dinner I had the massaman curry to compare it to the panang curry I had recently had in Koh Phi Phi. Again, it was mildly spicy and quite good - not hot. Unlike the massaman curry we had made at Asia Scenic, this curry had potatoes, pineapple and onions along with the chicken. It definitely had an Indian curry feel with the spices and the potatoes.
Molly chose the green curry with butter noodles. They were egg noodles and somewhat sweet; they were kind of odd and definitely didn't complement the green curry. She liked the curry but did not think it was the best she had eaten. Perhaps we were getting a bit too indoctrinated to the Thai cuisine (or more likely what I suspect is that the level of spice gets limited to appeal to a wider Western/European palate) but at this point I was thinking that the best Thai food we had eaten was what we had made ourselves at the cooking school!
Next stop: Koh Tao - Turtle Island. Luckily, this was a fairly short trip - only about 45 minutes in the van to the pier and about a 2.5 hour ferry ride, in which I slept the entire way still recuperating from the night before. We arrived before we could check into our hotel so we took a walk down to the main part of town and stopped for a bite to eat at a street-side taco shop run by "a lazy American". The tacos were unusual - containing many non-traditional mexican ingredients and some vegetables we couldn't even identify. I had a pork one and Molly had chicken; she didn't like hers and thought maybe the chicken was not that fresh - I liked mine a lot though I was starving and maybe anything would have tasted good at that point?
Koh Tao is a fairly small town and yet it feels very busy as virtually every tourist is zipping around on rental motorbikes (showing off their amassed injuries with gauze bandages, stitches, bruises and scrapes ever present). Diving is the thing to do in Koh Tao (which Molly did) and the town is filled with as many dive shops as tourists.
There are more Western style restaurants in Koh Tao and we were thrilled to find a true western breakfast complete with proper baked bread and almost drinkable coffee. I think we ended up at the Corner Cafe at least three times in four days.
One afternoon we stumbled upon a resort right on the beach where we plopped down on some Thai style, tri-fold cotton loungers, to have a drink and ended up staying for dinner. There were good tunes pumping out from the dj; there were lots of people around and the food looked and smelled delicious. The first night, I had the fried rice with pork and Molly went with the fried noodles with chicken and basil. Both dishes were very tasty, nice and hot and fresh but we both agreed they could use a little extra spice. As the sun went down, the fire show started and the grills were fired up and the massive shish-kabobs that were being cooked up looked amazing. We agreed were were going to be coming back the next night for a big BBQ feast.
fire show at Wind Resort
Besides diving, Koh Tao doesn't offer too much in the way of things to do. After Molly's dive, we did find a way to keep ourselves occupied for an afternoon and an evening with me getting a traditional Thai style bamboo tattoo. Molly had to sit around for a couple of hours watching me wincing in excruciating pain but she was able to numb some of her empathy pain with a couple of shots of Thai whiskey! She assured me that it was smooth and delicious but I didn't venture to try any Hong Thong or Sansong myself!
before starting -- all smiles
who's smiling now? not me! I'm in pain ... a lot of pain
finished -- because that's all the pain I could take --
perhaps I should have tried some Hong Thong after all!
perhaps I should have tried some Hong Thong after all!
We did go back to Wind Resort for the barbeque'd shish-kabobs and Gs&Ts. I had grilled pork with baked potato and salad and Molly had the chicken. We swapped some meat to be able to taste one another. I think the pork was the best; it was so moist and delicious.
The following day, without warning we were shocked to find it was the start of another of the big Buddhist holidays and alcohol was not for sale! Yikes! We had a nice patio in our room and we were becoming accustomed to a few patio beers in the afternoon and before bed. We had to use our best instincts and with a little finagling we managed to find a shop that would sell us some beers and then later when those soldiers were dead, we found a bar that agreed to sell us some more. Where there's a will, there's a way!
We had dinner on our last night at Brothers Restaurant. Sadly, it was not very good. Probably our least favourite meal so far. We shared the "no name vegetables" - yes, that is what they are called. We'd seen this and no name chicken under the Thai food section of many menus so far and decided we had to give it a shot. They are described as deep fried, chopped/shredded vegetables. They tasted like slightly oily vegetable fritters with a side of sweet chili sauce for dipping.
the "no name" vegetables -- which we later blamed for giving
us both upset tummies
For entrées, I had the stir fried noodles with chicken and deep fried basil leaves. It was not terribly flavourful and again, I found it overly greasy, and the wide rice noodles had a slightly slimy texture as if they had been boiling for too long.
Molly chose the chicken three styles with noodles. I'm not sure what three styles the chicken was prepared in but when it was served it looked like any generic chinese food take out sweet and sour chicken balls that you could get anywhere in Canada. Very mediocre.
The next day, we hit the saltwater superhighway once again for our ferry ride to Koh Phangan where we would be attending the Full Moon Party -- literally 10,000 or more people of every age, nationality and state of drunkenness (and amount of body paint) hanging out on the beach dancing, drinking and trying to avoid getting burned (from the fire skipping rope and limbo, not from the sun!). It was a pretty crazy party and it was good to see (once) but we both agreed we never need to go back again -- a big beach party is a big beach party. Been there/done that.
In Koh Phangan we discovered the fantastic coconut oil massage. Up to this point, we had only had traditional Thai style massage or therapeutic massage. The coconut oil smells like the richest warm toasting coconut you have ever smelled ... you feel like toasted coconut macaroons or the topping of dutch chocolate cake had been smothered all over your body. We left the massage place wanting to lick our arms off! It was awesome -- if only we had tried this earlier! We were lucky enough one evening to be laying there, getting massaged, smelling the toasted coconut oil and watching one of the most beautiful sunsets ever. It doesn't get any better than that.
On our final evening in the islands we had dinner at the Salad Hut, which is a more upscale place than some of the other resorts and restaurants. We shared the appetizer of mushrooms and cheese wrapped in bacon. We had seen this on other menus but this was the first that included cheese.
It was quite delicious and the cheese nice and gooey. The enoki mushrooms were still firm (if a bit chewy). Our only comment was the bacon should have been crispier, but all in all a nice start to our meal. For the entree, I chose the yellow curry. Again, nearing the end of our month in Thailand, this was the first time either of us had ordered it. Yellow curry is milder than green or red and is slightly thicker being incorporated with coconut cream rather than milk, and may even contain some palm sugar for a sweeter taste.
It was hard to leave and I was bummed that in a few more days, I would be starting that 30 hour journey home while Molly was continuing on in South East Asia heading next to Cambodia and then Vietnam. It was sad but I had such an amazing vacation and the month together passed like no time at all. For me, I know I probably would not have taken the leap for such an exotic location and spent so much time away had it not been for Molly and I am so grateful that we got the chance to go to Thailand together. Trip of a lifetime!
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