In a country where you wish good morning using the phrase: have you eaten rice today? I knew I would be well delivered, how is it possible to have a good day without food? I can even venture to say that the best I took from here was the food. Thailand's beaches are beautiful, but we are increasingly demanding.
We are still getting used to this backpacking, hostel life, buses, and trains for hours on end. Maybe that's why we haven't come out of our self so much to meet the Thais. Sometimes we are too tired for the inhuman effort of a conversation in which they understand nothing of what we say and nothing of what they try to say. Asking to leave your backpack at the hostel for a few hours can be a real mime game. Maybe that's why we didn't think that the expression land of smiles was so adjusted to Thailand. However, as of the date of this post we still have a week to go and everything could change.
We start, as we have already mentioned here , with a trip to Phuket. And I only believed that I wasn't in Russia because of the heat that was being felt.... Russian bars, signs in Thai and Russian, receptionists speaking Russian, ...
The days we spent in Phuket were our vacation. I know you think we've been on vacation for almost 6 months, but it's been a vacation for weeks... we went to the beach, surfed and ate, sometimes better than others.
Kata beach has not very big waves and if it weren't for the amount of people on the surf it would even be a good beach, words from Ivo who believes that at the time of the motions it is much better, We went to the market and tried some delicacies like some local sausages, meat kebabs, and pad Thai. But it was when we ventured a little further and visited a shophouse that we felt like we were eating real Thai food. A great pad Thai and fried rice that will be among the best we have eaten so far, the place was full of locals who stopped there for a quick lunch meal, we managed to order and a lady who cleaned the tables went out of her way to give us understand what spices we had to use to make it even tastier.
We knew the holidays couldn't last forever, but Thailand's beaches didn't stop there. We booked our trip to Koh Pha-ngan. An island in the Gulf known for its full moon party, and the opportunity to go scuba diving. A painful 4 hour bus ride plus 3 boat ride took us there. And the days we spent there were marked by the food once again, we discovered an Indian restaurant with Thai and Indian food that awakened our palate. There I tasted a local soup that must be the same sensation of eating in a garden: hot water with corn, tomato, onion, carrot, ginger, jasmine,... it may not sound good to you but I loved it. All this always accompanied by rice. As well as red curry, another typical dish of this country and massama curry, we would still do a cooking class to awaken more flavors.
There wouldn't be a full moon until the new year, so no partying. We took advantage of paradise for a day of snorkeling. Even on the island's beaches, just swim a little and you can see thousands of fish of all colors.
And that's how we said goodbye to the beach life of Thailand, Bangkok was waiting for us.
We left for another 4 hours by ferry and 6 by bus. In Thailand, renting a motorbike costs €5 per day. It's a perfect way for a person to move around the islands but our boat looked more like an infirmary with the amount of people with bandages, limps and skinned on it. We are grateful that we did not venture out.
We were a little sorry not to have gone to Phi-Phi, where the beach and James Bond island were filmed, but we read that there were a lot of tourists and combining that with the prices charged, we chose to discover a less frequented paradise.
And for those who have been, which were the beaches in Thailand that you liked the most?