Take it to the limit - one more time

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If you’d asked me a few weeks ago how much I like the Eagles, I would have said “a bit” “perhaps a bit more than the average”, I’m partial to the opening verse of ‘Take it easy,’ it’s hard to fault ‘Hotel California’ for it’s audacity alone and as singing drummers go, Don Henley pisses over the competition (although the competition is pretty much Phil Collins, so that’s a no brainer), but I wouldn’t call myself a fan per se. Well it turns out I must like the Eagles a lot more than I thought, and here’s the why.
A lot of the smaller bungalow operations here are attached to a restaurant. As accommodation is cheap, the owners rely on guests to eat at their restaurants as this is how they make their money. There have been occasions where guests have been asked to leave as they had not been patronising the restaurant as much as the owners would have liked. With this in mind, along with knowledge that we had secured our room for 100Bht a night less than our neighbours, we dutifully trotted along to the Taraporn restaurant for lunch the day we arrived off the boat. Having not eaten properly since we left Bangkok the afternoon before, we were pretty hungry and to have a restaurant on our doorstep was a welcome relief. Flicking through the first few breakfast and lunch pages of the menu, Mal picked a burger and I a ham and cheese sandwich and we decided we would eat somewhere else at dinner. Somewhere that sold cheaper, thai food.
At this point, I must add that Taraporn is not an unpleasant place to eat. A wooden deck that juts out over the bay and joins one side of the bay, via a walkway across the water, with the side we were staying on, with low tables and cushions that encourage napping, it has the most incredible views. At night it comes into it’s own, with gentle lamp-lighting and beautiful views of the bay at night. It also serves excellent cheap thai food - but we didn’t know either of these things yet as it was still day time and we’d only bothered to read the first few pages of the menu.
It was our inherent laziness that brought us back to Taraporn later that night, as we had physically pass through the restaurant to get to the side of the bay where all the shops and other restaurants are. As the place was busy - always a good sign - and we didn’t have a notion on where else we would go to eat, we decided to stay and enjoy the Eagles live album that the waiters were singing along happily to. That night I enjoyed a wonderful green currry (just 50Bht!) and Mal had the fish and chips which I think I mentioned on here somewhere before.
After that we went to Taraporn every night - and every night, we listened to the same Eagles album - it was still on as we passed later on our way back from the Easy Bar, and a few days later when we discovered Taraporn also did lovely thai coffee and good cheap eggs - we began to enjoy ‘tequila sunrise’ and ‘take it to the limit’ at breakfast time too.
But here’s the thing. Not once did I think, “I’m sick of the Eagles” or that I would never be able to listen to them again. In a way I looked forward to the slight country tinge of this particular live version of the songs as I ate my noodle soup of an evening.
It wasn’t the Eagles that dampened our affair with Taraporn, it was football. Chelsea v Spurs to be precise. Now I know what some of you may be thinking - how can you go all that way on holiday to watch football on TV when there are so many other things to be doing etc, etc. The thing is, we’re not on holiday, we’re going to be doing this for a whole year and if we were to cram in every possible experience like we would if we were on a two week holiday, we would be exhausted and out of money by Christmas. Sometimes it’s nice to have something familiar when everything around you is new and alien Plus it was Chelsea v Spurs and the first chance to see all the new summer signings.
We had spotted Cafe Tropicana advertising the game the day before, so after our usual Eagles sound-tracked dinner at Taraporn, we headed over to drink some coffee and watch the game. It was during the well deserved draw (from the point of view of a Spurs fan, my dad would probably have called it a ‘lucky’ draw from the Chelsea perspective) that we noticed that the food looked and smelled pretty good and we decided we may try there for dinner the next night.
So we did, and it was nice, and we noticed that their breakfasts were a bit cheaper than Taraporn (although the coffee was never as good) so we started to go there for breakfast too. We never completed deserted Taraporn, alternating dinner and breakfasts between the two and we had our last dinner enjoying the views (and for one last time, the Eagles) there. I had the noodle soup and Mal had a fried curry and it was delicious.

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