Oh, I forgot to tell you the weirdest thing about that restaurant we ate at last night. It was also a small store and they had a big bag of vegetarian chicken feet for sale! They looked exactly like fried chicken feet but were just made of wheat gluten. We've seen "fake" meat, but this was taking it one step further. We really wanted to try one, but buying a bag that had at least 100 in it wasn't worth buying for a sample. Plus, it would be a little creepy to crunch down on something that looks like a chicken's foot when I wouldn't even have eaten that in my non-veg life.
So tonight we are in the small fishing village of Chumphon. It's where the south of Thailand officially begins. We took a dirt cheap third- class train here and arrived only a few hours ago. In our few hours here we bought ferry tickets, stocked up on film and ate two dinners (to make up for the lunch we didn't have). One of them was a simple pad thai dish at a night market food stall but the other was quite bizarre... it was a nice restaurant, probably the fanciest one in town. The menu consisted of ingredients from which you picked what you wanted including spices. There were some stomach wrenching ingredients there, like pig's intestines and chopped pork as a seasoning. We passed all that up and ordered the tofu and veggies. The ingredients all came on individual plates and then it was all tossed in a huge hot pot full of steaming broth in the middle of the table. No doubt we were doing just about everything wrong since some staff at the restaurant seemed to really get a kick out of our ways. Luckily, our waitress was a really sweet person and she made sure we were getting what we wanted plus it seemed like she was enjoying practising her English with us. In the end we were charged for water we didn't order (but drank) and ice that cost twice as much as the water. We had to just laugh it off. Overall, the meal was just okay, but the experience was very entertaining.
We have been expanding our Thai vocabulary on a daily basis and can now explain that we also don't eat eggs (it sounds like "my chai kai" and is easy to remember because all the words rhyme). Actually, we have found that this isn't really necessary in Asia since being vegetarian is widely understood as excluding eggs as well.. but it's fun to learn the phrases and have the locals actually understand us!
We are leaving at midnight for a five-hour ferry that will take us to Ko Tao or "Turtle Island" where we are going to take a diving course. We're so excited! It's one of the few things that is on my Definitely Must Do in Asia list. I find the underwater world so fascinating and I can't wait to see it up close for the first time.
That's all for tonight. I'm feeling quite burnt out and uninspired since it feels we really haven't had a break since we left Pai. I'm looking forward to spending several nights in one place and of course, to the diving!
tothesea,
k&m