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Published: June 23rd 2006
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Surat Thani, Thailand
AN EVENING IN SURAT THANI
On arrival at the jetty I found that I still had a one hour bus ride to Surat Thani, and than again when I got off the bus I still had half hour taxi ride to the station.
The girl at the bus station quoted me THB250 or THB150 if I were to wait for another passenger to share a cab with me. However, I was fortunate enough to meet two Thai ladies getting off my bus who had the evening spare and offered to show me around town. Given the alternative of waiting for seven hours alone at a train station, spending the evening with two lovely ladies seemed an acceptable choice.
They hired a minibus to their hotel in town, where I left my bags, and we headed out to the night market for dinner.
The night market was incredibly colorful. I don’t know if it was really so much more colorful than other night markets that I have been to or because I was on a high following seven days of fasting, but the vibrancy of the colours took my breath away. Normally one to shy away
from even the suggestion of a market or chopping mall, I couldn’t get enough of it, which made me a great companion for Mila and Bak who evidently loved markets.
They bought me a delicious pad thai for dinner and then shared a pancake between them. Poor Bak had a difficult time with the food because she owns a restaurant herself; any food she eats is either not as good as hers or an inferior style. I loved it though.
We caught a tuk-tuk down to the morning market at the dock which, despite being only early evening, was already beginning. Apparently it really gets going after midnight.
Stalls sold a range of the usual suspects - all sorts of fruit, vegetables, and other farm produce, some of which I recognized but many, particularly the fruit, were species I hadn’t even seen in books. That said, I’ve probably eaten most of the fruit sold here in some of the strange fruit salads that have passed my lips.
The two Thai ladies, I found out, were sisters from Krabi and Muslims. This suited me fine, because at this stage I still wasn’t drinking again, so there would
be no temptation to yield to. Being ladies, however, it didn’t take long for them to get hungry again. We walked back to the night market for a second dessert.
The choice ranged from Thai style patbingsu (red bean paste and confectionery on shaved ice, also served in Korea, Vietnam etc), pancakes (of course) with a huge array of toppings, traditional sweets, and corn on the cob. Fortunately for my stomach, we settled for corn on the cob, which turned out to be the most delicious one I remember.
For the first time that evening I contributed to the cost. A whole ten baht.
On the way back to the hotel we didn’t see a single bar, but passed fifteen to twenty gold and silver shops (closed) and three or four karaoke places/massage parlors/brothels (open) an no pedestrians. I’m not sure if this makes a statement about what the place is, but I was happy to be spending only an evening in Surat Thani.
Back at the hotel we commandeered the lobby TV (there wasn’t one in the girls’ room) and watched Switzerland make beating Togo look difficult.
At the market, Mila had negotiated a
taxi to the station from her hotel for 100 baht, and offered me her room to shower and freshen up in. What wonderful people to meet!
When one thinks about meeting two Thai ladies who proceed to show you a good time in the evening, the (male) mind usually goes off on a tangent. I was incredibly lucky to meet these two lovely ladies.
They saw me off in my taxi at 11pm and I arrived at the station half an hour later for a two hour wait before my bed arrived in the form of a second class sleeper to Butterworth.
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