The food is O so good

Ah, the past few days have been good ones =)

I think when I last left you we were headed to do some light Bangkok tourism before jumping on a train, so I guess that's where we'll pick up. We decided to go to Thailand's biggest market, Chatachuk. We hopped a taxi which dropped us off at an obscure entrance at the north end. As we confusedly wandered around, the market slowly began to unfold. The first area we came across was where the merchants were selling wildlife. We were surrounded by fish tanks and small cages holding birds (little chirpy things up to peackocks), rabbits (wearing little bitty dresses), puppies (Travis: Leslie should never, ever come here; unless you want to raise a dog farm. Even I could hardly resist buying one of the hundreds of little fuzzy bouncy bundles with big sad puppy eyes just waiting to be freed from their oppresive cages), and many unidentifiable little creatures to the untrained eye. From there we began our long march south which revealed thousands upon thousands of vendors selling anything you could imagine. We spent about 3 hours wandering through endless ailes and estimated that we had seen between 5-10 percent of what was there. Exercizing great restraint, we left with only one bag of goods before returning to the hotel to grab our luggage and head to the train.

The seats we had booked were the best available, second class reclining with fan (no a/c). This was a gamble, as the train ride was scheduled to last from 7pm to 7am, but after toughing the bus through Cambodia, we were up for it. The seats didn't turn out to be too bad from first glance; we had plenty of leg space and a little table that reclined from the seat in front of us. The fans that rotated at the top of the cabin circulated the air decently, but keeping the windows down was still a necessity. We had grabbed some humbow and shumai from a street vendor in Bangkok's chinatown (score!) so we had full stomachs for the journey. As we got settled, the task at hand became getting to sleep, which turned out to be much more difficult than you'd think. The bright flourescent lights stayed on throughout the night, and as we were cruising through the country side, insects were getting drawn in through the windows (the entire cabin was open, again, out of necessity). After applying massive amounts of bug repellant, we still had to battle with the wildlife. At one point a dragonfly, which was more dragon than fly with a 3.5+ inch body (my Dad can attest), crash landed right onto my stomach. In a half fear stricken paralysis I managed to push my belly up close enough to the window to recruit my dad to swat it out the window. This is how beastly this dragon fly was: after my dad flicked it out the window, we watched it get swept back by the wind as the train was going about 40-50 mph. The dragon fly then flew against the wind, back into the same window from which it was flung. I shit you not. Luckily, it chose not to seek fire breathing revenge on us, but instead left to terrorize someone else. After constantly swatting more meager mosquitos for a while, I gave in and just tried to pass out, hoping that if I wasn't looking that they wouldnt be there.

We eventually made our way to the ferry that would take us to the islands. Over the course of the night we made the decision to go the Ko Pha Ngan; a lesser traveled and lesser touristy island, just another hour past Ko Samui. Along the way we gave into a resort salesman who showed us pictures of his place and arranged for us to get there for free. When we eventually got there, it wasn't so bad. The relatively new buildings made for a good bungalow and everything we needed, but the beach was made of rocks and we were a long ways out from much of anything. We decided to rent some motos and go looking for another place to stay. Down the beach a ways we found Mac's Bay Resort where we stopped for a beer to check it out. I couple of minutes later, two tall, blonde, blue-eyed beauties from Holland sat down at the table next to us and we stuck up a nice conversation. I got some good advice for my trip through that portion of the world, and we decided that Mac's was the place for us. As we headed back to our place, we made a stop at a place that had caught my eye earlier, Wat Pho- a temple with an herbal sauna. I made my way in while pops sat outside (maybe in his right mind as it was already 80+ ouside after the sun was down). I sat down on a cement bench with a provided cloth around my waist in almost pitch darkness. The whole room was about 8'x5' with a low arched ceiling and was about "fuckin' shit this is hot" degrees celcius. I punished myself for a certain time that didn't mean a whole lot to me as perception is a bit different in there. When I came out I used a bowl to pour fresh cold water over myself from a stone basin outside of the door. As I looked over to the old man with a look that said "that was amazing but I am spent", he says "aren't you going to go back in?" As I stupidly almost never back down from challenges, especially from the old man, I went back in for round two. Afterwords I was in a trancelike state as we drove the moto's back to where I slept. Really well.

The next day we gathered our things and made our way down to Mac's. The sun out the most it had been our entire trip so we slipped on some shorts and got into the ocean. The water where we were at varied between 1 and three feet for about 75 yards until there was a reef (note this section of the blog for later reference) that broke the surface and the small waves. We wandered out into it and were pleased to find the water a really pleasant 90 something degrees from being baked by the sun in the shallows. We sat down and just floated in the bath of the ocean and enjoyed the sights of distant islands, palms on the beach, and lazy puffs of clouds drifting above. Incredible. We were so content we just sat staring and floating for a couple hours; not noticing the burn setting in. Although we got charred a bit, it was totally worth it. For dinner we made our way just down the street to a really nice restaurant called Baan Thai. I ordered some Pad See Ew and two bottles of water to rehydrate. The food came out beautifully plated. a wide white dish with fresh noodles bordered by bright orange shredded carrots, crisp sprouts, and juicy green slices of lime. The flavor was even better, the rich and savory noodles weren't greasy at all, and the crisp veggies gave a perfect texture complement. We struck up our conversation with our chef named O, a beautiful thai woman who looked like she could have been a yoga instructer with a charming smile and accent. She was an incredibly gracious host with really positive energy. That, combined with the fact that she cooked us the best food we've had in Thailand, left me enchanted and so we resolved to return for dinner again.

We awoke the next morning fully rested and ready to go, though we were a bit tender on our shoulders. We took our time and cruised the island on our motos and over the course of the day we ran several small errands. At one point we stopped at an internet cafe to catch up on emails and blogging, and about half way through (at the note I mentioned) the power went out. Apparently this is a pretty common occurance judging by the reaction of the shop owners, who couldn't give that great of an explanation through the language barrier. We returned back to the resort where the power was also out (still don't know why), so we decided to head out again on the motos down to Haad Rin: home to what they claim to be the original Full Moon Party. The half mile stretch of beach was lined with 20 somethings laying out and swiming in front of a wall of solid reserts and bars blaring music. We gathered that the night scene at this beach is rather infamous for being quite a ruckous affair. Eventually we cruised back to Mac's so that we could stroll back out into the water and catch the sunset. What an unbelievable experience. Really comfortably warm water set our environs as ever changing pastel yellows and reds lit up the streaking clouds over the near perfectly calm ocean. An amazing sunset followed by, you guessed it, another amazing dinner at Baan Thai. We returned again to order some spring rolls to start and I took O's suggestion of the green curry with seafood for the main course. The spring rolls were unlike any I've ever had. The fresh, hot, and crisp wrappings held light vermicelli noodles and vegitables. Again, there was hardly any excess grease which made for a perfect appetizer for the upcoming meal. The curry was probably the best I've ever had. The flavors were clean and distinct, as opposed to the often muddy type of blend I am accostomed to, and it had just the right amount of heat that brought out the flavors without making it difficult to endure. Again, O was the perfect host and chef without breaking a sweat. After one last dip in our perfectly warm sun-heated pool in the perfectly warm evening air, we fall asleep content.

And here is where I find myself, typing away this last note before I run to grab my bags so we can embark on the ferry away from paradise. How I will miss it so, but the rest of the world can't wait forever, so here I come.

Here is a link to some more pictures, http://www.facebook.com/p.php?i=10700716&k=Y5DUY6TYV22M5FEGP1Z5QP
Thanks for tuning in everyone and thanks for the comments, it's great to hear from each of you, I'll see you back in Bangkok.