Text 19269, 82 rader
Skriven 2014-11-09 02:27:00 av MICHAEL LOO (1:123/140)
Ärende: Asia 249
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Breakfast is in the ground floor restaurant of the main
building; a wide variety of Thai, Muslim, and American
dishes, of which I gladly partook of fried fish, squid
curry with celery, and a shrimp preparation or two. Also
every day a different noodle dish, of which I remember
thin noodles with soy sauce and Chinese sausage. If I
encountered such a spread in the States, I'd be a much
more enthusiastic breakfast eater.

Interesting and huge spread of fruit, of which the most
notable was dried dragonfruit, whose concentration made
it actually sort of taste like something.

The American food was kind of dubious, and I eschewed that.

Delicious juices. Great staff.

The "complimentary" shuttle to town costs B50, but I think
that's round trip. Pick up and drop off on the Phaholyothin
Road right at the entrance to the night market.

The first thing to see was the famous golden clock tower,
which is indeed quite impressive; then we went off to a
local market (signs in English saying "market") which had
remarkable seafood, considering how far from the sea this
city is, lots of pig parts, lots and lots of clothing, small
electronics, household goods, bric a brac, the usual. The
distinguishing feature of this market was its grittiness -
it's a working persons' working market, not a tourist thing
at all, and I doubt it had seen many white folks in its day.

Next on the itinerary a number of small temples, the only
one I caught the name of was Wat Chet Yot (there's a similar
temple by this name in Chiang Mai as well), and then it was
lunchtime.

We were pleased to find a sort of restaurant row not far
from the bus station; from the all similar-looking places
with similar menus we chose the E&Z, a covered open-air
more restaurant than bar (many of the others were more bar
than restaurant). A big menu, from which I chose the crispy
pork curry, which was different from what I expected. It
turned out to be slices of pork jerky in a soy-based sauce
with lots of basil, served with excellent rice. It was quite
hard to chew but tasted delicious. Lilli had a cheeseburger,
which was the normal meatloafy thing you get outside this
dish's natural habitat; this came with fries out of a bag,
indistinguishable from similar throughout the world.

Leo (meaning lion) beer, a pale cousin of Singha (meaning
lion) was cheap, cold, and quenching.

The night market is very unprepossessing in the daytime; we
took a quick tour and decided we'd come back in the evening
and so took the shuttle back to the hotel for a shower and
a quick nap.

After drinks and snacks at the lounge, same as before, only
no pina colada, we returned after dark to find a carnival
atmosphere, the previously almost deserted streets crowded
with shoppers, stalls, street performers, and tourists like
us. Anticipating a somewhat brisker climate in Montreal in
a week or two I bought a knit hat for a buck.

There's a busy food court area with plenty of specialties of
the region. I went for a combo platter of braised crickets
in soy sauce and fried silkworms; they were unspectacular,
neither particularly interesting nor disgusting, though Lilli
went eww when I picked cricket legs out from between my
teeth. The crickets were like any old soy sauced protein,
the silkworms partway between cracklings and popcorn. There
were also big old water bugs for sale, but you got only two
or three for your 15 baht, and I was full anyway.

It was time to wash the remaining crud out of my teeth, so
we found the Sawaddee Restaurant, where we had more Leo beer
and a glass of Mekong rum-ish substance and then chugged out
of there to catch the last shuttle with 5 minutes to spare.

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