Thailand: Adventures in Eating

I haven't written extensively about our Thailand travels. There isn't too much to write: we had a lovely, quiet time at the Ton Had bungalows at Loong Dum/ Sang Thian, with few misfortunes*.

Sang Thian is fairly far south of the main town, Na Dan, and as such, it is a very quiet beach. Much of the beach is rocky, but there are nice sandy places to enjoy, too. Despite being a less-visited beach, there is a good selection of restaurants. One of our favourite places to dine was Apache, which has covered seating right out on the pier. Great atmosphere, friendly service and good food made this one of our preferred dining options close to home.

Apache - restaurant on the pier:


Thian does lack certain things - like ATMs! But the next beach north of us, Ao Wong Dong, was a much livelier, built up place with several ATMs and a whole lot of restaurants. It's an easy walk to Ao Wong Dong, and so we occasionally walked over there; the atmosphere was noisy and we were glad we weren't staying there, but the variety was nice. We had BBQ kebabs one evening, and even satisfied our pizza craving at Tom Pizza, which does serve great pizza! We also found a small place that catered more to the locals than to the tourists, and made sure to have breakfast there a few times.

Na Dan and the area around Hat Sai Keaw have many more restaurants, and places that are also less 'touristy'. Even when the signs were all in Thai, we generally got a bilingual menu. When we had the motorbikes we rode into town and tried different places, my favourite of which served some of the best grilled ribs and coldest beer to be had. I highly recommend a trip into town for the cheap eats.

Our final, most interesting foray into food was on our last night in Thailand. We had a room at a hotel near the new airport. We had several evening hours left, and went out looking for dinner. We passed up a few Western style places, and opted for a road-side 'restaurant'. We sat down, and were handed a menu that was completely in Thai. I read no Thai, of course. Not a word. And our waitress spoke no English. Not a word. We did manage to get two large beers (that being some of the only Thai we learned!), and then we pointed blindly at two dishes on the menu. It was going to be a Mystery Meal in every sense of the word.

When the dishes came, I was delighted with a tasty pork soup, but Brian ended up with a salad that had jelly-like balls quartered on top of the salad. Hmmm. Brian tried it; the salad part was okay, but the ball-things were sort of gross. I tried one, it was indeed gross, but I kept chewing the fatty-tasting thing until Brian said, "I think it might be cow eyeballs", at which declaration I promptly opened my mouth and let the food fall back to the plate. Not delicate, I know...

Mystery Salad


We then ordered some other things off the menu - some deep fried crispy things that were very good. I tried to ask if they were chicken; our waitress did not understand 'chicken', so I began flapping my arms about. Without answering, just smiling and nodding, she walked away. I saw her mimicking (mocking?) me to another waitress/cook. Then shortly after that, we received a great plate of deep fried totally delicious chicken that I had accidentally ordered.

By the time we finished eating, we were full and satisfied.

As for the cow-eyeballs - some in depth research when we returned to Japan showed that it was, in fact, merely preserved eggs, and the salad we had is called Yum Kai Yiew Ma. It still tasted kind of gross, though.

And now being back in Japan, back in our comfort zone where we can read the menus and speak the language, I almost miss the 'risk taking' back at that little road-side resto!

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*The only misfortune being that I somehow lost (or had stolen?) my cell phone. I contacted my provider in Japan as soon as possible and suspended the service; and I now patiently await any charges that may have been rung up, though I'm hopeful that I somehow simply lost the thing in the ocean!