Advertisement
Published: April 28th 2014
Edit Blog Post
Yesterday's blog miss, OMG!!! Previously we have spent $120 for 600mb of data on our phones and had to spend our whole trip stressed out, monitoring our searches, etc... in order to make sure we stayed in that amount. NO MORE! Found an article that said AT&T would unlock any iPhone that was 2+ years old and not under contract.....hello Matt's old 4S. We unlocked and bought a SIM card here for $3, then loaded it with unlimited data for $6.20. Ummmm....awesome. Siri is now our guide!!!
We went to bed at 10:30pm with an alarm time of 8am, and I have to tell you we probably could've slept forever BUT we arranged to have our rental car delivered at the hotel at 9am and wanted to be ready to go. Today's adventure....Thai Driving!!!! Woop Woop. Oh ya....that's right! They drive UK style on the wrong side of the road and right hand drive. That's no match for my husband who is the 007 of driving. If you can drive out of Paris in a stick...you can do ANYTHING. That my friends is a true story. I can bet money on the fact there is not a more stressful and
intense drive than that!!
So we set out and headed north out of Phuket Island into the mainland, to the Phang Nga area for what we thought would be an easy destination. We had to use both Apple Maps & Google Maps to try to find what is a major tourist attraction. Verdict = nothing is easy to find here. We struggled to find every single destination we planned today. We lost half a day in looking for mile markers, asking non-English Speaking Thai folks, and looking for signs that didn't exist. HOWEVER, when we finally arrived (what I felt was Amazing Race style) it was AWESOME!! Our first stop was Wat Bang Rieng, a Buddist temple that was quintessential Thailand. I didn't think ahead and unfortunately had to purchase a "top" and "pants" in order to walk around the temple. No exposed shoulders or knees for women (but male monks wear orange cloaks showing half their bodies??). Can I tell you that even that slightest extra layer of clothing made me feel like I wanted to die in the heat. If I haven't mentioned before it's 90+ here with 100% humidity. It was all worth it though!
We were hungry and had seen many people eating at one of the roadside local places on the way in, so we decided to stop. Here is where I will say I am proud of myself and channeled my inner Egypt trip because we were dealing with flies. I will be honest with you...I HATE sweating, and I am a sweater. On day 1 here, I had my mini meltdown the first time I could feel it running down my face, my neck, my everywhere.....I hate feeling like I have gross sweaty, oily hair...which is easy here. BUT the one thing I've got. The one thing I've got (even over Matt) very surprisingly is my fly "zone." That's right...I tune them out somehow and deal. I know a lot of other people could not handle it, but honestly it's a big part of eating in these countries. And let me tell you why...last night's meal at the Marriott?? Appetizer, 2 entrees, 2 beers, 2 wines, 1 dessert = $130. Today's lunch roadside...2 entrees, 4 beers, 2 waters = $9.30. That's right...amazing home cooked wonderful food where the lady came out who spoke no English and wanted to know if it
was "OK?" I wish I knew the word "amazing" in Thai!!!
Next we were off to find the Wat Tham Suwam Khuha Caves. Oye vey....another Apple/Google Map debacle where we drove down endless weird roads to no avail!! Finally read a blog post on Phuket 101 that gave us a KM marker # and found it (again this a major tourist attraction). What makes the caves is really the monkeys...hundreds and hundreds of them. I'll admit that they are nerve racking....you feel like they are going to leap at you at any second....but they don't. They are following you, hopping, and climbing everywhere!!! I have to say I am happy we got to see monkeys! The cave was pretty cool too, as it was filled with buddhas.
We were heading "home" to our timeshare and right before we saw a stretch of beachside shack restaurants. Matt whipped the car over and we ended up eating sunset, beachside. Ok, here we go....first we ordered "fried sea cicadas" which are fried sand crabs and from pre-reading we knew we wanted to order. Think of mini soft shelled crabs, really wonderful. if you don't think about their name and don't look
too closely at them they're wonderful crunchiness!! As we watched the sun set from our oceanside hut table right on the freaking beach we ordered fried fish and fried fish with sweet/spicy sauce. I can admit that times when I have been served a whole fish, it's been presented and then beautifully filleted by a waiter and put on my plate. Not here, they put down the whole fish: head, tail, and all. BUT what I can tell you is after tonight I am a convert. The only thing I can compare it to is buying a rotisserie chicken from the grocery store....
Have any of you done it??? Bought a rotisserie chicken for whatever reason (a recipe, to eat) and just stood there at the sink scraping every last morsel of meat from the bone like a cannibal??? Well that was us with our deep fried fish that we ordered. I will say top 10 meal of our lives considering the location and the food. We were there for probably 3 hours with 2 appetizers, 3 fishes, 5ish beers all for around $50. I can tell you that there isn't a beach side eating location like this anywhere
that we've been to that wouldn't charge $100 a plate just for the view. I think we will be returning this trip.....
Advertisement
Tot: 0.334s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 15; qc: 90; dbt: 0.1456s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.3mb
Tom
non-member comment
Beachside eats
All the food sounds great; fried fish, etc.....hopefully you pre-conditioned your stomach; peptones......how is their beer and wine. Thought you might have eaten monkey, similar to the guinea pigs in Macho Picho. Have fun, be safe......love mom and dad