A couple of brief asides from the travelogue, I'm posting these two as a reminder of how good the food was over there. Both are slightly Westernised versions of South East Asian dishes, and are delicious, to my mind. I write more food stuff at my personal blog, Antipathti, if you fancy a read.
The ironey black pudding cuts through the sweet and bitter tamarind quite nicely, and I quite like the very eastern meeting the very western. Mmm.
Ingredients
Tamarind
Soy or fish sauce
Brown sugar
Chilli (fresh or powder)
Salt
Spring onions
Flat white noodles
Black pudding
Egg
Peanuts (smashed up)
Lime
Method
Serves one.
In a little bowl, mix up about 1 1/2 tsp tamarind, 1tsp soy or fish sauce, 1tsp sugar, and salt and chilli to your own preference and taste. It will smell and taste crap. It transforms when cooked.
Chop up the spring onions and pack pudding and stir fry in a fairly tasteless oil, veg or ground nut for a couple of minutes. Add the noodles and the sauce you made and stir fry for a couple more.
Add the egg and stir it all quickly so the egg cooks into everything.
Dump it in a bowl and sprinkle over the smashed peanuts and a squodge of lime.
Eat with chopsticks if you're pretentious.
A couple of brief asides from the travelogue, I'm posting these two as a reminder of how good the food was over there. Both are slightly Westernised versions of South East Asian dishes, and are delicious, to my mind. I write more food stuff at my personal blog, Antipathti, if you fancy a read.
Or larb, or larp, or laab. Bless the confusion of translating from a foreign alphabet to the western. Etymology aside, this is one of my favourite meals in the world. This version came close to the delicious flavour when I've had it cooked for me, and has the advantage of taking about 20 minutes, with very little prep.
The mix of herbs is delicious, and makes up a huge part of the dish. I have made this with strips of steak. Traditionally it would be minced beef (or pork, chicken, white fish or any other deceased animal) but I like the steak strips as a little westernisation of the meal.
If you have an extra 10 minutes, dry fry a small handful of rice before you start, grind it up in a pestle and mortar, and add this to the pan too for extra authenticity. It's called Khao Kua and is a big thing in Southeast Asian cuisine.
Ingredients
Ingredients are per person
Frying Steak
Spring onions
Bird eye or other small powerful chilli
Mint- A large bundle torn into big chunky pieces, insofar as leaves can be chunky
Thai/holy basil- A big handful again, roughly chopped. You can get it in Waitrose or Asian food shops. It's sweeter than normal basil.
Coriander- a handful, roughly chopped
Lime- juice and grated zest of half
Nam Pla (fish sauce) 1 tsp
Chilli sauce- 1tsp and use sweet chilli if you like
4 or 5 large whole lettuce leaves, to serve.
Method
Chop the spring onion and chilli finely and cut the beef into thin strips. Chop the herbs as well to save panic later.
Railay Bay has no roads, and can only be reached by longtail boat. Our final stop in Thailand is here, and we hop on one round to the bay.
We get there, and after getting a little lost, we find our hotel. On the way, however, monkeys are running around the rooftops. This makes the entire trip! As this is our final stop in Asia, we treat ourselves to a really nice hotel, with a rooftop pool overlooking the sea. It is absolutely brilliant for laid back relaxing, and the view is spectacular.
Railay is another tiny space, with one beautiful sandy bay on one side, with a few shops and restaurants up a little track, and on the other side, a stony tidal dock, with trees growing out of the water, and a little warren of grubby bars and cafes blaring out reggae.
There are actually three main bays, with one North or South of the central bay, a short journey by kayak either way. You can also kayak out to the rocks out at sea, where travellers stack stacks of stones above the tide line, as a little permanent marker of having been here. We did this- you have no idea of the height of these limestone cliffs until you look up from the foot of one of these monolithic beasts- sadly, water + camera= no photos!
The little restaurants on the front are lovely too, and we ate some of the nicest and largest meals of our time here, and watched people letting paper lanterns up into the sky.
As we leave to get the boat and taxi to Krabi airport, it is with a heavy heart- we've seen so much beautiful stuff while here, eaten so well, met lovely people, it was gorgeous (apart from maybe Ayutthaya).
So another boat trip from Ko Phi Phi to Ao Nang. Uneventful, save for the very end, where we have to jump a good meter and a half over water with 20kg backpacks on, because the walkway on our boat has broken! Cheeky tuk tuk drivers try to get us to pay for a bus we had already arranged, warning us that we may be entering the realm of the tourist once more.
Ao Nang is a little more touristy- the following videos we shot show you what to expect of an evening, all from our first night, where we got pleasantly toasted and had Indian food- you miss it while you're away from the UK! A reggae band, a fire eater, and a police car playing Manu Chao kept us amused, along with the usual buzz of offers from shopkeepers.
The next day was all about relaxing, save for an hour we spend writing postcards, and Christmas cards in time for them to get there on time (ish). Ao Nang is beautiful, with it's enormous craggy cliffs, and it's beach with longtail boats zipping off all day long.
In the evening we wandered the shops and found an amazing all you can eat place, with barbecued meats and a mix of Thai and Western food- after 3 months it was nice to have the option of a break from chilli and Nam Pla (fish sauce).
But by and large our time was spent enjoying the beach, with cold beer and fresh fruit, knowing our Asian adventure was nearly at an end, and soon we would be in Australia, and (oh no!) having to work.
Ao Nang was a very nice town- massively busy and touristy. And so for our final stop before our flights to the next country, we wanted to go back to a little bit of remote paradise, just up the coast, at Railay Bay.
Hop on a bus at the side of the road outside the 7 eleven and we're on our way to Phuket. After getting the impression that the resort towns are very... resorty, we elect not to go to them, and check in at a little hotel in Phuket Town, with a cute but spatially limited room.
Phuket Town is a little grey and dreary, though Chinatown and the parks are very pleasant. You can see why most farangs use it as a changeover and little else, but having stopped here, you can see that the Thai let their guard down here, and are less interested in selling to you, and more interested in why you're here. Unfortunately this means we have nearly no photos!
Jenny and I fancied seeing a film and so we went to the cinema. They're much like English cinema's, except you can afford popcorn and a beer without selling a kidney, and brilliantly, you have to stand up for the King's Anthem. Made us feel very British, ironically.
The next day we booked a ferry out of town to Ko Phi Phi, and ate and drank our way around town. The highlight was a fusion restaurant owned by a Thai guy who'd been living in Australia for the past 15 years. He was lovely and chatted away to us over a few beers about how much we were going to enjoy it there, and we told him how much we were already loving it here. The food was great too! We also saw our first Christmas tree, which made us a little homesick, but happy.
The next day, we hopped on the ferry and made our way to Ko Phi Phi, where everyone ever will tell you is where they filmed The Beach. We also saw the island from The Spy Who Loved Me which was very cool.
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On arrival, they make you pay 20B upfront to clean up after you, which speaks ill of the tourists who visit. Then the town itself is no more than 150m wide, with a beach either side, a little warren of wood and sand, with all the basic amenities, food, beer and such, and again, very few motor vehicles. It's very crowded, but it looks idyllic, and we spent our time here lounging on the beach and enjoying the beauty of the area. Little more to say, save for that it was a lovely pit stop, and I'd recommend it to any visitor.
