That's Thai for 'Holy shit it's spicy!'

  Hat Yai, Thailand
Thursday, October 6, 2005

I was only here for half a day but I thought I'd throw an entry in anyway as it was a dodgy stop and we had a couple of entertaining adventures.

By we I mean Lindsay and I, deciding to travel from Langkawi into Thailand together as we're heading roughly the same route. Being honest, it's nice having a someone to look out for you on annoyingly long travel days like this one.

So we set off early through the drizzle for the ferry to Satun, on the southern tip of Thailand. Timing things perfectly we managed some breakfast and to change money before boarding a stinky but fast boat for the hour and a half journey. Once in Satun we were issued a visa and passed customs easily enough, but then the issues began.

Holding a monopoly in a port 9km from the town itself, the dodgy travel desk extorted a sizable amount out of each of us for the mini van transfer to the gateway of Krabi province, Krabi town. And unbeknownst to us, it wasn't a direct bus either. Two hours we ended up 150km off course in the bustling metropolis of Hat Yai, with three more hours to kill. As instructed by the travel agent, "you go lunch now".



Deciding on a street eatery was a cunning plan in principle. In with the locals, have a stab at the menu, then hope for the best. The waitress pointed at one item as a recommendation so I took it. What the hey, looks as good as any other. I figure that there will always be something in a dish I like to eat.

In this case there was, but very little. It was a soup containing prawn and squid, overlaid with lemongrass, a strange pulpy substance with the consistency but not sweetness of unprocessed sugar cane, onions, and to top it all off, half a kilo of full and diced chilli peppers. Yep, the vicious little green bastards that are one step below Chief Wigam's 'Guatemalan Insanity Peppers' in levels of mouth melting hot and spiciness.

God it was hot. Lindsay almost coughed up a mouthful of noodles when she saw my face after my first spoonful. My eyes bugged out and my face no doubt flushed and stayed red. The Coke I was drinking did nothing to ease the pain. Still, I conserved my cucumbers and ate as much as I could, mainly the prawns and onions. After all, I keep saying I'm going to have to toughen up one day...

The funny thing was it did no long term damage, despite being the hottest thing I've ever tasted. And I actually kind of enjoyed it, maybe I could even get used to it. I guess it was just one of those things you occasionally do on these types of trips, but usually not often enough. Getting out of the comfort zone, experiencing local life, meeting real locals who can't speak a word of English. It's bizarre and actually not an easy thing to do.



Anyway, after recovering enough to walk, we did some shopping at a very westernised mall complex down the road. The brands were slightly different but the layout could have been lifted from any city around the world. Exiting the mall, stage right, the one thing I noticed about this large but innocuous southern Thai city, and the countryside around it, was their reverence of their monarchs. Large pictures of the King and his Queen (I presume) abound. He's on every banknote. A little Saddamesque at times but I think these guys are actually loved by the masses. I'll have to do more research during my travels here.



Here's another couple of cute photos I can't use anywhere else. The baby was a (mercifully) quiet passenger in our minivan that eventually made it to Krabi at 8pm that night, and the bird, well he was next to a petrol pump at a gas station en route. A little old fashioned perhaps, but effective in telling if there's any life threatening leaks. I should have opened the cage door...

Next entry -> returning to Railay, post tsunami

Words from the wise #26

"It's just a bunch of stuff that happened."
Homer