If I won’t get sick from food I ate and water I drank after today then I’m gonna be fine in Thailand for the rest of my stay. I have just returned from my tasting spree in Prachuap Khiri Khan, where I’m going to be spending the night. I tasted three kinds of seafood rolls barbecued on a stick, some pastry, something that could be called “seafood scrambled eggs”, 6 flavours of ice-cream and about 7 kinds of sweets. With this I also had a cap of water with ice in it (should you not be aware of it, visitors to Thailand are strongly warned against having ice in their drinks as it can be made from tap water that is not advisable to drink in Thailand at all apparently) and a fruit cocktail, that turned out to be basically a crushed ice with some fresh fruit juice. Earlier today I had another two glasses full of ice with my lunch.

To give you an idea of the cost of food sold in stalls here I will list what I had just now:

• Three seafood sticks – 12 Baht
• Full plate of seafood scrambled eggs + a plate of greens – 20 Baht
• Fresh fruit ice cocktail – 10 Baht
• 6 small scoops of ice-cream topped with chocolate, two types of nuts of my choice and lychee – 20 Baht
• 3 pastry thingos – 3 Baht
• 2 fried thingos (not sure what it was, but it tasted like a coconut breakfast porridge, that was fried into almost ball shape) – 2 Baht
• 6 different kinds of sweets (cakes – like a carrot cake for example, two types of jelly cakes and some balls – 6 of them – that are sweet but I could taste tuna quite strongly in it – those tasted quite horrible to me) – 18 Baht

So all this together cost me 85 Baht, which is almost exactly 3 Australian dollars… Isn’t that a deal!? J

This was obviously not a typical day as I wouldn’t eat so much in the evening, but since this town is so lovely, the people and food so inviting and since I was thinking today that I should try things at the beginning to know what to go for later during my further travels in Thailand, I just had more. Normally one would typically spend about 30 Baht (which is currently just a little over AUD 1) per meal. A meal usually includes a soup, main meal (say a plate full of rice with some shaved meat and some greens and sauce on it) and a drink (I’m not sure about prices of Coke, Sprite and other western soft drinks as I usually get a 250ml flavoured milk or soya milk or I try some local stuff). Another example: Today I had a medium sized salty fish on the top of the previously mentioned, a huge plate of greens and for a drink I had a liter of water. All that still for only 30 Baht.

In the afternoon I also bought something that I saw being sold in about a hundred other stalls before and of what I had no idea what it was. It turned out to be a half-dried whole banana (that tiny kind of bananas) after I tasted it. I’m not sure whether it is also covered in something else or if it is just the brown mushy thing that you get when a banana is bruised. Whatever it is it tastes great. Half a kilo of this cost me 25 Baht (and lasted me for weeks).

I have made another observation today… actually two…
First, there are many spots along the road with sometimes up to half a kilometer long row of stalls. That is not as interesting by itself. What I noticed though was that usually all of them at one place are selling the exact same goods. Then you get to a different place and you get similar long row of stalls, but this time they are selling something different from the row of stalls that you'd see before, however, again they are all selling the exact same products. So at one spot you might get a row of stalls all selling biscuits and 20km further you get dozens of stalls all selling fresh, dried and semi-dried bananas and then another 15km further you get 300 meters of stalls all selling wicker baskets and other things made from the same material. Many times I was telling to myself that I would like to stop for lunch but there is not a single stall that would sell normal food. Then you might get something else again and then suddenly you have a hard time choosing who would you buy your lunch from as everybody there is suddenly selling Thai food. (Oh yes, I’m eating Thai food… You see, there seems to be no Chinese here… ;-) No really, Thai food is very nice too, as long as I stay clear of spicy foods, which I had no problem with at all yet.

Otherwise today was supposed to be an eventless day as I didn’t have any stops at interesting places planned and the main purpose of today was just to move myself further north closer to interesting places like Bangkok and Chiang Mai. However, two unexpected things happened. (Don’t you love when something interesting happens when you don’t expect it?) First one of these two were cockfights that I had the chance to witness. I was just riding along the highway when I noticed something that looked like an arena full of applauding people and also some things happening around. So I turned my bike into the opposite direction (on the same side of the road… yes, it is normal to do it here too - the same as in Malaysia… :) ) and went back to find out whether it might have been a Thai Boxing match which I would really like to see. It turned out to be cockfight championship, which is I guess the second national sport here. I stayed couple of fights, took some photos and continued. Even though I am not really a fan of having animals fight each other I admit it was an interesting distraction from the long drive.

Second surprise of the day was the town I’m now staying in. I just picked it quickly off the map on my GPS as the final destination of the day because it was just about the right distance away that I was ready to drive today. Prachup Khiri Khan is a very lovely town on the eastern shore of Thailand, in the Gulf of Thailand. It is much smaller that I imagined it to be based on its location and the map icon. This find was really great. The town has couple of biggish hotels, but it seems to be far from infested with foreigners and so it seems to keep its original feel. The streets are looking like they haven’t changed in long decades and they are not choked with traffic either. Everything seems to be just right. There is some development going on on the beach, but it seems like they are only creating support so that the beach don’t get washed off. I love this town as towns like this make traveling worthwhile and interesting. Compared with Phuket it is as different as water and fire – in Phuket you could be basically in any other busy western city, while in Prachup you get the feel of real Thailand.

Oh, while on the topic of “real Thailand”. I have to say that Thais are very lovely people, almost always smiling at you, especially if you give them a smile or a nod yourself. The contact with people is very warm. If only they could speak English so that one could also talk to them a bit. Well, there are some little, very limited English conversations every day, but it is mostly limited to “where are you from?”, “where are you going?”, “oh, so far!?”, and “what cc engine?” type of questions as their vocabulary doesn’t allow to go any further. But still, they are very lovely people. And the girls are mostly very pretty too ;-), which you don’t get in too many countries around the world.

I met another English guy who was just checking into the same hotel as I was. We agreed to go looking for something to eat together at 8PM. However, after waiting for him downstairs at the hotel for 20 minutes I decided to go by myself. We met later in the evening again and it was there when I found out from him that Thailand has actually and hour difference from Malaysia, which I wasn’t aware of. So I actually waited for him at 7PM and then he waited for me at the agreed 8 in return… J

Nothing much happened today, yet I still somehow managed to write quite long diary entry… Hope I’m not boring you too much ;-).

(393km)