How to Sprain Your Foot by Eating Thai Food
March 27 - April 10, 2024
It’s strange that it took us so long to get to Thailand considering that it has been near the top of our travel bucket lists for pretty much our entire adult lives. The main barrier to entry - whether starting in the US or in Europe - is that Thailand is very far away, so going there automatically warrants a longer trip to offset (or justify) the travel time. For years after moving to Berlin, it was definitely much easier for us to hop over to nearby European countries than it was to plan a multi-week vacation in Asia. But after finally making it to Japan in 2023, we were energized to make our long-fantasized and long-postponed trip to Thailand a reality.
The timing of the trip naturally coincided with Mazz’s 40th birthday, and as that date drew nearer, we diligently kept our eyes on flight prices. Mazz had been using a flight tracker for over a year but the prices had never dropped into what we considered an acceptable range. Then, our friend Matt sent us a message inviting us to his wedding in Bangkok. He knew it was a long shot, but if we wanted to make the trek, he promised us a blowout of a party. The time to make a decision grew closer and closer and then suddenly the prices of the flights dropped by several hundred Euros, right to the upper limit of what we were willing to spend (€750 per person). The timing for the cheap flights fell with Matt’s wedding squarely in the middle. It was time to finally pull the trigger and head to Thailand.
First and foremost, this was always going to be a food vacation. We truly, wholly love Thai cuisine, and couldn’t wait to try the real thing. The mecca of Thai food is Chiang Mai, up in the north of the country, so that is where we planned to head immediately after landing in Bangkok. We were about to book flights and hotels, but thankfully spoke of our plan to our Auntie Lizard before actually purchasing anything. She’s been to Thailand several times and even lived there for a while, and she asked if we had looked into “burning season” up north during that time. We had no idea what this meant, but a quick internet search informed us that the exact time of year we were planning on traveling to Northern Thailand was the time when all the farmers set their fields and debris on fire before the rainy season. The air quality in Chiang Mai the previous year during that period was described in one YouTube video as being akin to “walking into a bonfire.” The consensus advice on every message board was to go as far south as possible during this time, where temperatures were significantly cooler and the air was clean. Chiang Mai would have to wait for a second trip.
Our Finn Air flight stopped over for several hours in Helsinki before arduously avoiding Russian airspace and eventually depositing us in Bangkok. From there, we immediately caught another flight to the southern city of Hat Yai, near the border with Malaysia. With a dizzying array of great places in Thailand to choose from, we’d solicited recommendations from friends to help narrow things down. Both Lizard and one of Kirb’s old co-workers, Sucha (who is Thai), recommended the island Koh Lipe, so we made that our first destination. Getting there requires some extra effort, though, including a speedboat ride which only departs from a few different ports on the Andaman Sea. One of those potential ports was situated outside of Hat Yai, a town that we knew of only because it is the namesake of our favorite Thai restaurant in America. If the food in Hat Yai proper was half as good as the Hat Yai in Portland, Oregon, we were in for a treat.
Hat Yai
Hat Yai is not a city widely visited by tourists, but it is still widely renowned for its cuisine. Specifically, Hat Yai is known for its fried chicken, which the restaurant in Portland dutifully recreates. There was a fried chicken stand directly across the street from our hotel with good reviews online, so after some much-needed showers and changes of clothes after more than 24 hours in transit, we wandered outside for our first taste of real Thai food. Friend, let me tell you, that chicken was fantastic. Super crispy, moist, and slightly spicy, served with fried shallots and a sweet and spicy sauce to dribble over the top, that chicken was worth the trek. As we wandered through town in the sweltering late afternoon heat, we made our way through Kim Yong Market, overstuffed with bulk foods and snacks, and were awed by the porcelain Wat Chue Chang Temple. When something in a window looked tasty, we ate it.
That night, we called a cab to take us across town to the ASEAN Night Bazaar, but left after only giving the place a cursory glance. The food stands were mostly closed and the market consisted of aisle after aisle of knock-off clothing. There was another night market nearby, and arriving at Greenway we were relieved to find exactly what we had been hoping to find at ASEAN. Most importantly, there was a huge and bustling food court in Greenway serving just about any Thai dish you could possibly hope to eat. We chose crispy pork with garlic, chilis, and a fried egg, a “creamy omelet” with chicken holy basil, and finished with some mango sticky rice. We were so full and so pleased as we waddled through the market stalls that night. We’re not sure if we needed more than one day in the town of Hat Yai, but if we had stayed longer, we definitely would have eaten well the entire time. That much is certain.
Koh Lipe
The next morning, we caught a bus from the downtown train station to the pier, about an hour and a half away. From there, we hopped on a speedboat for another hour and a half to get to Koh Lipe, which is about as long as you probably want to sit on a speedboat. Though it has become more touristy in recent years, Koh Lipe is still pretty chill by Thai island standards. This is not a destination built for all-night partying and debauchery like Koh Phangan, Koh Samui, or Phuket. But Koh Lipe isn’t exactly rural either. There is a central, car-free “Walking Street” filled with dozens of bars and restaurants and the vast majority of the beach space is claimed by small resorts with in-house restaurants. We stayed at one of these, called Wapi Resort, and though we didn’t have a stunning sea view we were only a few steps away from the beach and a bar with cold beers and food. Walking Street was minutes away by foot; the entire island could be crossed in one direction in about a half an hour.
The low angle of the sun indicates it is now time for happy hour mojitos
The fact that Koh Lipe was a tropical paradise was no particular surprise upon our arrival; we could see that clearly enough from the pictures before we came. It also shouldn’t have been a particular surprise that the food on Koh Lipe was delicious - everyone knows Thai food tastes good, dummy. But the food on Koh Lipe was really good, something you can’t necessarily expect on a small, tourism-driven island. And because Koh Lipe is surrounded by water, it meant there was freshly-caught seafood on most of the island’s menus at very reasonable prices. Compared to the lowest prices you could expect to pay for a plate of food in Thailand, the price of seafood on Koh Lipe was actually relatively high. But compared to what you could expect to pay for seafood that fresh and that tasty just about anywhere else, it felt like a bargain.
We had originally planned to stay on Sunset Beach on the western part of the island for our first few evenings. But after seeing a string of week-old 1/5-star online reviews of the hotel we had booked absolutely roasting the place for being every kind of terrible, we canceled and booked a place on Sunrise Beach the other side of the island instead. Still, we were curious to see if the first place we had booked was actually so bad, so we walked across the island to check it out, along with the western coast. This area was significantly more rustic and run down than ours, with a dilapidated resort swarming with mosquitos that was being reclaimed by the jungle along the way.
The reality of the situation at Bayview Sunset Resort didn’t seem to be anywhere near as dire as the reviews had made it out to be, and their restaurant was set at the base of a charming enclosed cove with tables set up in the surf. We ordered some beers and mango sticky rice and plopped our feet in the water. It was all so nice that we ended up renting snorkels and taking turns swimming around while the other sipped on cold ones and enjoyed the view.
Staying at Bayview probably would have turned out fine, but in the end, we were happy to have ended up at a place that was significantly closer to Walking Street and all the great food it offered. When it was time for a snack, we were always happy to wander from street vendor to vendor sampling the wares. Our favorite was “coconut donuts” that came with a catchy tune from the stall owner: “Co-co-nut do-nut, 10 baht, 10 baht.” We are still singing that little ditty to one another weeks later. Every night was a fun new adventure at a new restaurant with new dishes. And afterwards, if you wandered down to any beach after sunset, you were sure to find a fire show being performed outside of a bar. Seeing people swing flaming balls with sparks shooting around their bodies is always entertaining.
Squids cooked in their ink and giant prawns grilled with chilis
After two nights at Wapi Resort, we moved down the beach to the Castaway Beach Resort. Auntie Lizard had recommended it to us, and upon seeing the accommodations online, we booked instantly. At that time, there were only two nights available in one of their beachside bungalows, so pretty much our entire itinerary for this part of the trip was built around staying at this resort. No pressure, Castaway! On first glance, everything about Castaway Beach Resort seemed perfect. They put us in the best waterfront bungalow, all on its own with a private section of beach, with two hammocks on the stoop and a wholly unimpeded seafront view. Everything was perfect and nothing could ever possibly go wrong!
Castaway Resort is eco-friendly, which is great in principle, but it meant that they did not have air conditioning, and this was the hottest part of the year in Thailand. There was a ceiling fan, but it barely seemed to blow air, and so even inside the mosquito net with the doors wide open in our second-story bungalow room, it was a sauna. Waking up in bed to a perfect view of the sun rising over the ocean doesn’t feel quite as tranquil when you’re not sure if you ever actually got to sleep in the first place. It was a good thing we didn’t have much more on our schedule the next day than chilling out on a beach.
Lack of sleep didn’t particularly get in the way of snorkeling and day drinking, thankfully, and there were always hammocks for weird, hot naps. That night we decided to go and see the sunset on the beach that faced west and were not disappointed by the display. Then we made our way to one of the larger, more bumping seafood restaurants, hoping that the crowds knew something we did not. The crowds did mean that we waited a particularly long time to get our food, but the seafood we received was particularly good. We had fresh oysters grilled with garlic and served with a spicy sauce, and a new kind of curry we had never seen on a menu before called choo chee. It was dark and spicy and fragrant and we loved it instantly. Any time we saw it on a menu from then on, we ordered it.
Four days was a good amount of time to spend on Koh Lipe: enough to properly relax, explore, and try out multiple restaurants and new dishes. We had trusted the recommendation and were not disappointed by it in the slightest. But we knew these chill beach vibes wouldn’t last forever. Next, we were off to visit our friend Jesus in full-on tourist hell.
Krabi Province
Jesus is a different breed of party animal than us. He once told us that he didn’t really care about the music at music festivals; he just liked being around lots of other people. So, we were more than a little worried when he arrived before us in Ao Nang and reported: “I have bad news! I’m in Ao Nang and…it’s awful. The beach itself isn’t that bad, but the mass tourism here is crazy. This might not have been the best place to choose. Is your booking refundable?”
It was not! And true to Jesus’ first impression, Ao Nang was definitively not our vibe.
Ao Nang is one of the dumbest tourist traps we’ve ever visited. It’s a reggae cover of “Wish You Were Here” played at ear-splitting volume, while in the background, three different Red Hot Chili Peppers songs scat on top of each other without end. After eating extremely well in Hat Yai and Koh Lipe, we were shocked to be served Thai food in Ao Nang that was genuinely bad. We learned quickly that positive google reviews here didn’t actually mean anything. In the heart of the tourist trap, the people frequenting the restaurants had likely never eaten anything resembling good Thai food, so they were happy with whatever they got, assuming it was “authentic.” What was wildest to us after eating so well on Koh Lipe was that there were Thai people willing and able to serve food so bad.
We met Jesus on Ao Nang beach and were happy to plop down in the sand at sunset and crack some cold ones with our dear old friend. Despite the crowds of people, you couldn’t knock the natural beauty of the beach and its scenery. It was hot, so we decided to hop in the water. We hopped right back out when we were instantly surrounded by giant stinging jellyfish.
Weed was recently legalized in Thailand and virtually every other storefront in Ao Nang is a dispensary. At night, young, predominantly-white tourists in skimpy clothing are shepherded aggressively into bars that are custom-made for international bad decisions. We played along and were swept away into the neon lights at a place called Chang Bar where we ordered a literal bucket of mojito. You could buy balloons full of laughing gas from the bar here, among other strong inebriants. The skimpily-clad youths screamed along to the too-loud music and we imagined enjoying the scene a whole lot more when we were younger, less jaded, and more willing to make bad decisions of our own.
Despite the basic stoner dorm vibes, there’s still a good reason to come to this part of the world: Just a short boat ride from Ao Nang (and only accessible by boat) are Railay and Tonsai beaches, some of the most stunning you’re likely to ever find. Everywhere you look, green-covered limestone cliffs jut off at different angles above white sand and turquoise water.
Jesus had already been rock climbing in Tonsai for almost two weeks when we met up and led us through the jungle from Railay to the world-renowned rock-climbing paradise. People were roped up on cliff faces everywhere, and we set up our towels in the shade of a rock overhang that doubled as the most challenging climbing course on the beach. Here too, the waters were absolutely teeming with jellyfish, and HOT. After only a minute or so in the water, Kirb was stung on the elbow and retreated. As added insult to injury, he’d also forgotten his wallet in his shorts when he went in the water, so we had to dry out all of our money with rocks on our beach towel. Then, he cut the bottom of his foot open on something sharp in the sand and accidentally ripped a hole in his favorite tank top. Tonsai beach was so nice, all that crappy stuff didn’t even dampen his good mood.
Jesus had already been rock climbing in Tonsai and living in his swim shorts for 10 days, so he knew where the good food was and led us to a secluded hut behind the beach. Here, in this most rural of locations, some nice ladies served us genuinely delicious curry and Khao Soi and we were so pleased to find that not all of the food in this area was disappointing. Outside the restaurant, the locals were using a slingshot to shoo away the “bad” monkeys in the area, while in the village down the road, a woman was feeding bananas to the “good” monkeys. From there, we took a longer trail back through the jungle to Railay and proceeded to sweat more than we have at any other point in our lives. Our hands shriveled up like we’d spent hours in the bath. A nice cool dip in the ocean would have been the perfect remedy, but unfortunately the ocean here was boiling hot and teeming with giant jellyfish.
As we roamed from beach to beach and the tide began to come in, avoiding the jellyfish became a gauntlet. Moving down the beach meant avoiding getting slapped in the ankles with jellyfish as big as a basketball. This dangerous dance continued when we had to take the boat back to Ao Nang in the dark and couldn’t see the nasty buggers in the water anymore. Tonsai and Railay beaches were truly gorgeous, and the little bit of the town in Railay seemed genuinely charming. Since you can only access these beaches by boat, they are likely a great place to stay once all of the day trippers like us are gone. We definitely would have enjoyed sticking around to check out the nightlife. Instead, we went back to Ao Nang and took a tuk tuk blasting Bob Marley outside of the tourist zone to try and find something worth eating. Thankfully, Larb Koi Roi Et restaurant was worth the extra effort. We knew we were in the right spot when the majority of the patrons were Thai.
Getting away from the tourist traps was indeed the surest way to enjoy anything in Krabi Province. The next morning, we ordered a Grab car to drive us 30 minutes outside of Ao Nang to a spot for sea kayaking. Our phones barely worked out there, so our young driver offered to stick around until we were done and drive us back into town for a small fee, which we graciously accepted. After a quick explanation of the kayak route, we tossed our belongings in dry bags and started paddling out into the open water. Our path took us alongside forested cliffsides until we eventually found the entrance into a beautiful slot canyon.
Before long, the rocky walls on either side of us turned into a forest of mangrove trees with roots exposed above the shallow water line. The water in the mangrove canals was barely deep enough for our boats to glide through, until it wasn’t, and we skidded to a stop. Kirb got out to turn the kayak around and sunk knee-deep into muck, but eventually we were able to get back paddling the way we had come. On our way out of the canyon, dozens of visitors in a guided tour were coming the other way, and we were glad we had avoided them for the majority of our excursion.
When we got back to shore, our cab driver had abandoned us, so we walked down the road to a nearby restaurant on the water. Parched, we ordered beers and fruit smoothies and a full coconut to sip on. Then, we smelled something heavenly coming from outside the bar, where an outdoor cooking station was set up. An auntie was frying up curry that smelled tremendous, so we ordered up three plates, and it was indeed some very delicious food. Grab, the go-to taxi hailing app in the region, was not responding to our request for a ride back into town, so the lady at the bar suggested we walk up to the pier to try and hail a cab. There was indeed a guy there willing to drive us home, but being the only game in town, he wanted twice as much to get back into Ao Nang as it had cost in the morning. So it goes. On the ride back, we were able to see that the haystack rocks in this area stretched on as far as you could see along the coastline. There was so much to explore in the countryside out here if you had the time.
We had stashed all of our bags - and Jesus’ - in the luggage storage room at our hotel, and when we arrived to collect them, we discovered it was happy hour in the poolside bar. Expecting rejection, we asked the front desk if the three of us could keep stashing our bags for a while longer and go drink in the pool, but they had no objections. So, we spent the afternoon draining sugary cocktails at the poolside bar instead of properly hydrating ourselves after a fairly strenuous morning of sea kayaking. Just like on the sweltering jungle hike between Tonsai and Railay beaches, our entire hands pruned up into labyrinthine patterns. When we finally pried ourselves from the pool, we took another cab 30 minutes into Krabi Town, closer to the airport for our early morning flight the next day.
Getting out of the cab, Kirb felt as if he had sprained his left foot and had trouble putting pressure on it. This was strange, because he hadn’t done anything during the day to physically injure it. It wasn’t until a good hour later that he remembered the last time he inexplicably thought he had “sprained” his foot - right before a devastating gout attack that immobilized him for three entire weeks. The triggers for gout are pork, shellfish, sugar, and alcohol. So, basically, everything he had been eating every day so far in Thailand. Cruelly, Kirb would have to start thinking carefully about the consequences of his actions for the remainder of the trip.
Krabi Town is not the stupid, stereotypical tourist trap that Ao Nang is, but rather an actual Thai city where actual Thai residents live. As such, it has proper night markets with properly delicious, cheap food. Still, we somehow managed to go to a restaurant in one of these markets with 4.9/5 stars on google out of nearly 600 reviews that served us bad food. We couldn’t believe it. The woman who owned the place served us, and said that the barracuda in yellow curry was the shop’s specialty dish, so obviously we ordered it. It was the single worst thing we ate on the entire trip. Seeing that we did not eat everything we were served, she sternly told us to inform her if we were not satisfied with the food, and that she would reprimand the kitchen staff accordingly. We simply nodded and mumbled lies about it being fine and slunk away, wondering how on earth this restaurant could have amassed so many positive reviews online. There are few things more frustrating on a trip like this than knowing you are surrounded by incredible things to eat and then sitting down for a disappointing meal. But now we knew one thing for certain: positive google reviews don’t hold much weight much in Thailand.
Matt & Pid’s Wedding
Kirb’s foot was a painful, hobbling mess when we arrived in Bangkok, so the first order of business was to find a pharmacy and get some medicine. The temperatures in the city were noticeably higher than by the seaside, amplified by the omnipresent cement and smoggy air. Getting across major intersections required climbing and descending multiple sets of stairs, which is extra fun on a busted food. We got phad krapao for lunch at a place near our hotel, thinking it was legit because of the line out the door. Turns out, Phed Mark is actually owned by a popular American food blogger, and since going viral on the Chinese social media site Xiaohongshu, has become a hotspot for Chinese tourists (everyone in the line when we went was Chinese). It was a long wait, but at least the food was good, and after refueling in the hotel room, Kirb was able to ice his foot and start taking pain and anti-inflammation medication. Finally, the healing could begin (assuming he would stop getting massively dehydrated and then pound beer, pork, and shrimp).
Kevin is one of Kirb’s best friends from childhood. Matt is one of Kevin’s best friends from high school, so Kirb and Matt have also been buds for over 20 years. Matt had invited his out-of-town friends for a gathering the night before the actual wedding at his apartment, where his fiancé Pid’s parents had prepared everyone a variety of delicious Thai dishes. Their place was only about 20 minutes by car from our hotel, so when the time came, we ordered a Grab. Then we sat in gridlocked traffic for an hour and a half. We understood then why we had been advised to take the train whenever possible in Bangkok - there are periods of the day where the roads just don’t move. When we finally arrived, it was great to meet Pid and catch up with Matt and some of his friends whom Kirb hadn’t seen since high school. Matt is a chef, so all the food was unsurprisingly delicious. He promised many more delicious things to come the following day.
Kevin had more or less randomly decided to stay in a New Orleans-themed hotel in Bangkok, and since it was cheap and close to the main drag, we didn’t bother overthinking it and booked a room at the same place. Unfortunately, we did not think about what that hotel meant for getting to the wedding ceremony at 7:30 in the morning, which was quite far away in the outskirts of town. As it gets extremely hot in Bangkok this time of year, it’s much more pleasant to start outdoor activities as early as possible. We had asked someone at the front desk the night before to arrange an early morning taxi for us, but they didn’t do it, so someone from the hotel went out onto the street to try and flag down a taxi for us once it was already time for us to go. Eventually, an old guy pulled over and had a brief conversation with the hotel attendant, and we got inside the car.
Up to this point, we had only used the Grab app to get taxis, as we had read plenty of stories online about how Bangkok cabbies will almost certainly try to rip white tourists off. Kirb immediately noticed a towel over the cab meter and lifted it up, asking the hotel attendant if the cabbie was going to use the meter. The hotel attendant said yes, so Kirb turned to the driver as well and asked, “You’re going to use the meter, right?” and the man nodded affirmatively. About a block or two down the street, the driver still hadn’t switched the meter on, so Kirb asked him politely to do so. The man became incensed and started barking that we had to pay a flat fare, no meter! If we didn’t like it, we could get right on out of his cab and find a different one. After some brief quibbling, we conceded that cabbie had us over a barrel and instructed him to continue driving: We were going to be late for the ceremony if we had to flag down another car. Also, his extortionary rate to drive us to the edge of town was only €11. We’d survive, but we’d definitely be using Grab for all the rest of our cab rides.
Bang Phli Ancient Market is situated on the Samrong river, which Buddha supposedly traversed thousands of years ago. He stopped at the site of Bang Phli and the people there made a temple to commemorate his visit. These days, they don’t generally host wedding parties, but Pid convinced the mayor of the area that their celebration was going to double as a cultural restoration project to help bring life back to a depressed area. We arrived to find the bride and groom receiving blessings from a long line of orange-clad Buddhist monks, who then filed onto a boat and disappeared down the river. Matt asked us if we wanted to be in the ceremony and we happily obliged, so he sent us onto another small dinghy that took us downstream as well.
Soon, we boarded onto a slightly larger boat, which had a PA system and several men in the back with microphones doing call-and-response yodeling in Thai. Each of us were given a tray of traditional sweets that symbolized a sort of dowry for the bride. Matt would arrive with his own specific gift to Pid in hand: a bucket of Kentucky Fried Chicken. The boat carried us back up to the ceremony grounds, where a large group of friends and family greeted us with cheers and songs. We followed behind Matt in a procession carrying our gifts as he answered questions about his bride to-be, who stood up on a balcony above admiring the scene. When Matt answered correctly, he was allowed to ascend the stairs with a bucket of chicken to gift his future wife.
For the festivities, there were food stands preparing Pad Thai and a blood-thickened pork soup, iced coffees and slushies to help beat the heat, and tasty tapioca chicken balls for snacking. The guests took turns pouring holy water out of conch shells down the bride and grooms’ hands, which ran down into bouquets of flowers to symbolize growth. Local aunties in brightly-colored dresses did choreographed dances to traditional Thai songs for entertainment. Supposedly, only a few aunties were originally slated to perform, but when word got out, many more insisted that they be allowed to participate as well. It was a bright, lively, and lovely ceremony unlike anything we’ve been a part of before.
With several hours to kill between the ceremony and the reception, we decided to explore one of Bangkok’s biggest attractions: malls. Bangkok is obsessed with malls. They have ten bigger malls than the biggest mall in your town, and the scale of these malls is hard to properly comprehend, even standing inside. We decided to visit centralwOrld, which the internet said was only the 2nd best mall in town, but the top choice was too much of a pain reach and make it back to the ceremony in time. Hungry but not wanting to spoil our dinner, we found that the food court on the top floor of centralwOrld had hundreds of restaurants and stalls selling virtually every food imaginable. One entire floor of the mall had electronics stores, another sporting goods, and so on, with multiple wings per floor - and each wing was as large as what we consider to be a normal mall. You could easily spend an entire day inside looking at all the stores. We ran out of time and had to leave before we knew it.
The reception was held at Benjarong Bangkok, a Michelin Bib Gourmand restaurant with a huge open courtyard and outdoor bar. Industrial air conditioners were set out next to the tables, trying in vain to mitigate the sweltering temperatures. At least one of Matt’s guests had to leave before dinner was even served due to heat exhaustion. The bride and groom emerged elegantly from the main building at the beckoned call of their drag queen MC, with Matt wearing a 3-piece lavender suit and an Arby’s trucker hat and Pid in a lacy white veil, and blazer, bra, and pant suit emblazoned with the phrase “I Wanna Bangkok.” Pid looked like Beyonce; Matt looked like he would sell you a really nice waterbed. They wanted the guests to roast them from the tables during dinner, but everyone was either too nice or too hesitant to drag the newlyweds in front of hundreds of friends, family, and coworkers. Kevin did the best of the bunch, telling a story about how when he and Matt were in high school, they spent so much time together that both of their parents were convinced they were secretly gay.
The food and wine flowed freely, highlighted by a papaya salad with soft shell crab that was divine. Kirb made a business decision about his gouty foot: He was going to eat shellfish and drink alcohol in moderation at this celebration, but he would flood his system with as much water as humanly possible in the process to try and counteract any negative effects. It was so hot out that it didn’t take much effort to drink glass after glass of water. By the end of the night, he figured he must have chugged more than 20 of them, but only peed four times. The heat in Bangkok is really something else.
After dinner, the guests were escorted inside for a private concert by one of Thailand’s coolest bands: Paradise Bangkok Molam International Band. Matt and Pid had seen them in concert on their first date and pulled out all the stops to have them perform at their wedding. The band plays a unique version of upbeat psych rock performed with traditional Thai instruments. After a few songs, a line of skimpily-clad Go-Go dancers appeared and got the crowd going with choreographed moves. The bar was serving a variety of Thai moonshines with salted and pickled local fruits as chasers. Outside, cooks were serving up bowls of custom Pho, while another table was loaded with fried chicken and sides from Matt’s favorite, KFC. The party was truly over the top, if Kirb’s foot wasn’t exploding, he probably would have drunk waaaay too much Thai moonshine. Matt and Pid’s wedding was completely over the top in all the best ways. It was truly a party for the books.
Koh Phayam
Neither us nor Kevin were particularly interested in staying in sweltering Bangkok after the wedding, choosing instead to once again move towards water. After checking out some of the options outside of the capital, we decided that the best and most cost-effective move was to actually fly back down to the southern part of the country. There are lots of cheap domestic flights from Bangkok, so it cost about the same amount of time and money to fly to far-away Ranong as it would have to drive to a closer, less-desirable destination. Koh Phayam was billed as a secluded, under-the-radar island with the enticing nickname, “the Maldives of Thailand.” The promise of an unspoiled island paradise was enough to justify the effort required to travel there and back from Bangkok in a mere 3-day span.
It was clear leaving the airport in Ranong that we were in a rural part of the world. There were no cabs here or Grab apps for rides; our “taxi” to the Ranong pier was a decades-old chonky blue behemoth of a pickup truck that had been converted into an open-air people-mover. Ranong Pier wasn’t on the ocean but inside of a muddy delta, with barely enough brown liquid beneath the boat at low tide to make it to open waters. The speedboat that took us out to the island only held about a dozen people and thankfully only took 40 minutes to reach its destination - half as long as the trip to Koh Lipe.
We were greeted on the pier by a long, exposed coastline at low tide and a sun-bleached statue of hornbill birds, the mascot of the island. Though we had traveled south from Bangkok to the water, it was still brutally hot here, and the 15-minute walk carrying our bags to the hotel almost wiped us out. But once we checked into our rooms, ordered some cold beers, and sat down beneath the shade of an enormous tree by the beach, we were confident we had made the right decision to travel all the way down here. As promised, Koh Phayam was most definitely a tropical paradise.
This island is significantly bigger than Koh Lipe, so it was much less practical to walk from one end to the other. Most people simply rent scooters for their stay on the island, but as we were planning to drink, we decided just to hire tuk tuks instead. For a couple bucks, you can hop into a sidecar attached to someone else’s scooter and they’ll drive you to whatever beach bar you want. Our first destination was called “Rock Bar,” not because it was a place for heavy music, but because it was literally built over a bunch of rocks. Our tuk tuk driver dropped us off on a nondescript jungle path and told us to follow it towards the water, though there was seemingly nothing in the area. Eventually the path came to the edge of a cliff, and next to a rickety wooden stairwell we spotted a hornbill clearly in the bushes. It seemed like good luck. Carefully, we descended the stairway down to the beach and found a truly wonderful scene.
Rock Bar looks like something out of Robinson Crusoe, assembled from driftwood and bits of rope that have washed ashore. But this place is no mere beach hovel - it’s an entire compound, with multiple buildings, bars and walkways, complete with naked feral children living inside. The sheer amount of time and effort that must have gone into building the place is astonishing. Unclear if the bar even had running water, we stuck to cans of cold beer, and cracked them open with a full panoramic view of the sunset. We were the only customers when we left; it felt wild to have such a magical place all to ourselves.
It wasn’t exactly clear how we would get a tuk tuk back from Rock Bar, so we decided to just walk instead. The evening was warm and pleasant, and as the sun went down, millions of insects began to shriek into the night. Before long we were back into an area with restaurants and stopped at a place that looked promising. We ordered pork larb, massaman curry, and sautéed greens and the food was delicious. We drank cold beers in the warm night, and when we made our way back to our hotel, we found that the tide came in much farther than we expected, completely submerging areas by the hotel that we thought were swampy marshes. The rooms were air conditioned and we slept like royalty.
Kevin is allergic to shellfish. This is not a great affliction to suffer from in Thailand, where it seems like virtually everything has some form of shrimp or crab in it. To aid in his survival, Kevin printed out a card that explains in Thai that he is not allowed to ingest any sort of sea bug. It was easy enough to flash the card at any of the restaurants we visited with Kevin and feel like the information was properly conveyed, and in the end, we managed to make it through the trip without Kevin having to use one of his epi pens. Once again, the seafood - particularly the fried fish curry - was incredible on this island, just like Koh Lipe. After a full meal at Koh Phayam Seafood, everything was so good we went ahead and ordered an entire steamed white snapper for dessert. We did not regret our decision.
Originally, we had thought that we would rent scooters for the day and explore the island, but the heat was so intense in the afternoon that we opted instead to buy a bunch of ice and beverages and enjoy them in our air-conditioned rooms, scrolling through foreign TV channels to see what passed for entertainment in this country. Strangely, Thai TV was almost entirely infomercials - a hundred channels of them - all unique and yet all selling one form of pill or another. Channel after channel after channel of pill infomercials. It’s hard to say exactly what we were expecting, but it certainly wasn’t that.
Koh Phayam was recommended to us by Auntie Lizard, but the thing that really sold us on the island was finding a place called Hippy Bar on google maps. One look at the place and Kirb decided that he needed to go. Once the afternoon heat died down a little, we wandered back into town and unsuccessfully tried to haggle down a price for a tuk tuk to Hippy Bar. As soon as we were en route, we understood why the driver was not particularly interested in giving a discount for this route: Hippy Bar is located on the far, desolate northern tip of the island at the end of a windy, choppy dirt road. Getting there is not easy, and that seems like it’s entirely on purpose.
We all agreed within moments of walking into Hippy Bar: “This is the coolest bar I have ever seen.” Hippy Bar took the deserted island ingenuity of Rock Bar from the night before and turned it into something truly grand; an entire fortress constructed of driftwood and rope, with a suspended second story of walkways and tucked-away seating areas. It felt like walking into a pirate bar from the 16th century, or the hideout from Peter Pan and the Lost Boys in Neverland, save for all the rasta flags and reggae music. There was a smoldering fire in the middle of the ground floor that bathed the upper deck in smoke, helping to keep the mosquitoes at bay, as the entire complex was built into the forest.
Where the bar met the beach, it extended out into the sand as a massive bow of a ship, cobbled together painstakingly from small pieces of wood. There were only a few other people at the bar when we arrived, so once again we were able to grab the best seat in the house for a gorgeous sunset over the water. As the sun disappeared, multi-colored lights gave the wooden complex a festive glow, and we were impressed by how effective the smoke was at keeping away the bugs. We could have stayed at Hippy Bar all night, but eventually left to fill our grumbling stomachs. No photos we took did justice to how cool this bar looked and felt. Hippy Bar was an awe-inspiring experience.
Down the beach, we pulled up for dinner at a restaurant called Knock Knock Nok that was shadowed by an enormous cashew tree. There were cashew food specials on the board, which we assumed would be hyper-locally sourced, so we went ahead and ordered them. We were also surprised to find that this restaurant was the first to offer both of our go-to dishes at American Thai spots: pad khee mao noodles and panang curry. We had been extremely curious to see how the more authentic versions of our favorite dishes compared to what we were used to back home. Unsurprisingly, both the new cashew dishes and the familiar noodles and curry at Knock Knock Nok were top-notch. Throughout the meal, the tree kept dropping cashews on Kirb’s head, so much so that he was convinced for a while that a monkey was throwing them at him, but no monkey could be seen. He wondered aloud if the tree was punishing him for eating its babies, and the moment the words left his mouth, another cashew dropped directly onto the top of his head.
It took a while for a tuk tuk to make it all the way out to the tip of the island to pick us up. It would seem that few drivers were interested in doing that trip in the dark, though one young man in a particularly shoddy scooter was up to the task (for an extra 100 baht). That tuk tuk ride down pitch-black country roads back to our resort was genuinely dangerous, but it was the kind of danger that fills you with more adrenaline than terror. Still, we all took a breath of relief when it was over and happily gave the daredevil driver his fare for our safe return.
When we packed up and loaded onto the speed boat back to Ranong the next morning, we felt good about our decision to schlep all the way down the country for two nights in paradise. Now, it was time to go back to the heat and the noise of the city for one last hurrah of pan-Asian delights. Chinatown was calling.
One Last Blast in Bangkok
Bangkok is one of the best food cities in the world, but when we were there for Matt’s wedding, all the delicious food we could ever need had already been provided for us. Our flights back to Berlin the next morning were brutally early, and Suvarnabhumi Airport is nearly an hour outside of the city center by car, so we had booked a hotel as close to airport as possible. That meant we had only a few precious hours in our final evening to explore the world-famous street food in Chinatown. We planned on making the most of our limited time.
We took maybe ten steps outside of the Chinatown subway station before seeing a guy chopping up crispy pork belly with a cleaver and going over to buy some. And that’s how the next few hours went wandering beneath the neon lights: see something tasty, buy it, eat it on the street, repeat. We found Chinese donuts and pork soups listed in the Michelin guide (both amazing), beguiling towers of round sausages (looked better than they tasted), and whole carts full of vibrantly-colored dim sum items we’d never seen before (the ones we got were very strange and not particularly delicious). There were so many different stalls and foods and sounds and lights that it was really a lot to take in, and paired with the heat, Kevin eventually got frazzled and had to flee. We weren’t far behind; Chinatown was definitely a lot. It wasn’t the best food we had in Thailand by far, but it was definitely a worthwhile experience.
Several people asked us after the trip if Thailand lived up to the hype. Especially since we had wanted to visit for so long, our expectations were particularly high, so it would have been easy to feel disappointed But Thailand was exactly what we had hoped and expected it to be, both good and bad. The food tasted just as incredible as we had dreamed, and the weather was just as oppressively hot in April as we had been warned. Our pale, moderate-climate bodies simply didn’t know how to adjust, sweating so profusely that we wrinkled into prunes, or bloating so wildly that our ankles disappeared for days on end. But that was all part of the adventure, and the adventure is genuinely grand in Thailand. And since Thailand is the sort of place that many people go for their first big international trip, it’s like vacationing on easy mode for seasoned vets like us. The hardest part of the trip was simply making decisions about where we wanted to go. Burning season kept us from visiting Chiang Mai in the north as we had originally planned, so we’ve already got a second trip to Thailand loaded and ready to go. Hopefully, it won’t take us as long to return as it took us to get there the first time.