We arrived at Koh Lanta beach resort, ready to do some serious “chillaxing” both by the pool and on the beach.
We had decided that we would stay at a nice place right on the beach. The hotel didn't disappoint, even providing towel "sculpture" each day. We think this was a bunny.
We were met by our fabulous friends Paul and Julie. (If only we had taken a photo of them as they jumped into the pool to greet us! Later in the post we’ll include their pictures.) Julie is a wonderful cook and we have enjoyed many meals together at their beautiful home in the El Cerrito hills. They went to the farmer’s market in the morning and had bought all sorts of seafood and vegetables. The green balls are tiny eggplants.
They surprised us with a feast that Costa Lanta restaurant cooked (because Julie is on vacation)! This is Nee, the owner of Costa Lanta who told us about the food we were eating, such as morning glories with shrimp and chilies, deep fried fish with green mango salad, and jumbo prawns with a lemon grass marinade. There were eight dishes in all, and everything was so delicious that we agreed it was a perfect meal.
Nee shared a lot of information about the island, including giving us directions to a locals-only restaurant. She told us the specials would be on a chalkboard in Thai only, so ordering might be a bit challenging. Julie, however, was up to the task.
But first, she had to untangle her self from the resident pooch.
The decor was simple and there were plenty of Thai customers eating too. As the two cooks worked their magic, we were occasionally inundated with smoke from the hot chilies, which made us cough in anticipation.
We feasted on a variety of delicious Thai dishes, including this prawn curry with Chinese long beans.
Here Paul is enjoying the tom yum soup.
After the hearty and spicy meal, we decided to walk back to the hotel along the beach, where we saw this flaming performance.
The next day we would meet up for breakfast before heading out for a half-day snorkeling trip. We took a 30-minute speedboat ride to some of the local islands.
Sun protection is important for us whiteys. Julie is clearly well-prepared.
Pete and Paul are not convincing as menacing pirates.
Here are Julie and Cynthia just out of the water after seeing lots of interesting fish.
We saw this beautiful feather star fish.
Tobies, boxfish, and puffers were plentiful. We even saw one toby with a little wrasse cleaning him; The wrasse is in the second photo, on the toby's head.
This eel put on a great show, swimming around for about a minute. We haven't seen this type of behavior for so long before.
And of course there were plenty of snorkel fish.
After our snorkeling trip, Paul, Cynthia, and Kristina headed to Time for Lime, a Thai cooking school. Pete had taken this class back in April and really enjoyed it. However this time he opted to be the "lazy" partner, as did Julie. The three cooks are pictured with Mai, our Thai cooking teacher.
Mai made funny jokes as she taught us. The plate shows four of the main spices in both their "eat me" and "don't eat me" forms. From the left are galangal, chilies, lemon grass and kafir lime leaves. Many cooks in the class confessed to having eaten the large pieces of galangal and lemon grass in Thai soups.
We each were given a cleaver to prepare the ingredients for red curry paste.
We pounded and pounded and pounded it.
And then we pounded some more. Mai joked that we were getting our exercise for the day.
Next we prepped the ingredients for prawns with holy basil.
On to the cooking! It was fun.
Our first dinner was tom ka gai, which is coconut milk soup with chicken, and the prawns with holy basil. The lazy partners and the cooks all ate together.
Next we learned how to make a chicken with cashew nuts dish. It has to be cooked at extremely high heat.
As Kristina added her ingredients, the flames got huge. She looks worried, but Mai told us it was all good.
After 30 seconds, the stir fry was cooked. It's shown here with tod man pla, which are Thai style fish cakes that were spiced with our red curry paste. This was our second dinner.
At the end of the night we thanked Mai for being such a fun teacher.
Then we hopped into a Hello Kitty tuk tuk and headed back to our resort. We liked riding in style!
All too soon it was time to say good bye to Cynthia and the beach. We are so happy that she traveled with us for three weeks! At the airport we saw lots of decorations for the King's 86th birthday that was December 5th.
Paul and Julie hadn't been to Bangkok for 10 years, so we first took in the amazing views from the 25th floor at Long Table bar.
We then went to the King's birthday celebration. The atmosphere was festive, with fireworks and lanterns being sent aloft.
What's a birthday party without balloons!
Of course, no Thai street celebration would be complete without food. Many vendors set up impromptu restaurants throughout the area. We grabbed a table and enjoyed a light and tasty meal.
Yellow is the color of royalty, and people were showing their love for the King by wearing yellow shirts. Even this cat is dressed in yellow.
The festivities were located in the same part of Bangkok that is witnessing the current anti-government protests. Both the protestors and the government had agreed to a truce so the nation could celebrate their King.
Many of the people we saw during the celebrations would return a few days later in one of the largest demonstrations in Bangkok's history. The protestors would force the Prime Minister to dissolve the parliament and call for new elections within 60 days.
On our last full day together we hired a long tail boat to take us through the canals.
We were not surprised to see more signs of the Thai's love for their King.
It was lots of fun to watch life on the canals from the boat.
Bangkok was mostly swampland until these canals were created in the 16th-19th centuries. While many canals have since been paved over, there are enough remaining to require signs identifying the canal names.
This woman had a traveling restaurant. She's using her cleaver to chop roasted duck.
Julie had visited the Snake Farm when she was in Bangkok 20 years ago. It was recently demolished and all that's left were amusing statues.
Anyone want to buy a waterfront fixer upper?
These young monks were enjoying a swim, and temples along the canals abounded.
We stopped at Wat Arun, the Temple of Dawn, and enjoyed views of the Chao Phraya River from the top. We had so much fun being in Bangkok with Paul and Julie!
At Wat Arun, Paul and Julie dressed up in Thai exotic costumes. Pretty convincing make-up, eh?
We ate like kings. One night we went to Bo.lan restaurant. The weather has been warm and comfortable, so we sat outside.
The chef at Bo.lan, Duongporn Songvisava, was recently named the best female Asian chef in the inaugural edition of Asia's 50 Best Restaurants. The amuse bouche course was memorable for the middle dish that tasted like macaroni and cheese but had been made with shrimp paste, coconut milk and rice noodles.
Through all the glasses you can see Paul with ya dong grachai dum, a Thai whiskey that tasted similar to sherry. The green shot is pandanus juice. This course was served with sour fruits like tamarind that we dipped in salt.
Our dear friends Paul and Julie are so busy with work and travel, as Paul's creative video production company, eMotion Studios, is thriving and demands a lot of time. We are so happy they were able to escape and enjoy a few days of frolicking in Thailand! We have many wonderful memories of our time together.
Long live the King! But don't forget the Queen(dahls)!
We had decided that we would stay at a nice place right on the beach. The hotel didn't disappoint, even providing towel "sculpture" each day. We think this was a bunny.
We were met by our fabulous friends Paul and Julie. (If only we had taken a photo of them as they jumped into the pool to greet us! Later in the post we’ll include their pictures.) Julie is a wonderful cook and we have enjoyed many meals together at their beautiful home in the El Cerrito hills. They went to the farmer’s market in the morning and had bought all sorts of seafood and vegetables. The green balls are tiny eggplants.
They surprised us with a feast that Costa Lanta restaurant cooked (because Julie is on vacation)! This is Nee, the owner of Costa Lanta who told us about the food we were eating, such as morning glories with shrimp and chilies, deep fried fish with green mango salad, and jumbo prawns with a lemon grass marinade. There were eight dishes in all, and everything was so delicious that we agreed it was a perfect meal.
Nee shared a lot of information about the island, including giving us directions to a locals-only restaurant. She told us the specials would be on a chalkboard in Thai only, so ordering might be a bit challenging. Julie, however, was up to the task.
But first, she had to untangle her self from the resident pooch.
The decor was simple and there were plenty of Thai customers eating too. As the two cooks worked their magic, we were occasionally inundated with smoke from the hot chilies, which made us cough in anticipation.
We feasted on a variety of delicious Thai dishes, including this prawn curry with Chinese long beans.
Here Paul is enjoying the tom yum soup.
After the hearty and spicy meal, we decided to walk back to the hotel along the beach, where we saw this flaming performance.
The next day we would meet up for breakfast before heading out for a half-day snorkeling trip. We took a 30-minute speedboat ride to some of the local islands.
Sun protection is important for us whiteys. Julie is clearly well-prepared.
Pete and Paul are not convincing as menacing pirates.
Here are Julie and Cynthia just out of the water after seeing lots of interesting fish.
We saw this beautiful feather star fish.
Tobies, boxfish, and puffers were plentiful. We even saw one toby with a little wrasse cleaning him; The wrasse is in the second photo, on the toby's head.
This eel put on a great show, swimming around for about a minute. We haven't seen this type of behavior for so long before.
And of course there were plenty of snorkel fish.
After our snorkeling trip, Paul, Cynthia, and Kristina headed to Time for Lime, a Thai cooking school. Pete had taken this class back in April and really enjoyed it. However this time he opted to be the "lazy" partner, as did Julie. The three cooks are pictured with Mai, our Thai cooking teacher.
Mai made funny jokes as she taught us. The plate shows four of the main spices in both their "eat me" and "don't eat me" forms. From the left are galangal, chilies, lemon grass and kafir lime leaves. Many cooks in the class confessed to having eaten the large pieces of galangal and lemon grass in Thai soups.
We each were given a cleaver to prepare the ingredients for red curry paste.
We pounded and pounded and pounded it.
And then we pounded some more. Mai joked that we were getting our exercise for the day.
Next we prepped the ingredients for prawns with holy basil.
On to the cooking! It was fun.
Our first dinner was tom ka gai, which is coconut milk soup with chicken, and the prawns with holy basil. The lazy partners and the cooks all ate together.
Next we learned how to make a chicken with cashew nuts dish. It has to be cooked at extremely high heat.
As Kristina added her ingredients, the flames got huge. She looks worried, but Mai told us it was all good.
After 30 seconds, the stir fry was cooked. It's shown here with tod man pla, which are Thai style fish cakes that were spiced with our red curry paste. This was our second dinner.
At the end of the night we thanked Mai for being such a fun teacher.
Then we hopped into a Hello Kitty tuk tuk and headed back to our resort. We liked riding in style!
All too soon it was time to say good bye to Cynthia and the beach. We are so happy that she traveled with us for three weeks! At the airport we saw lots of decorations for the King's 86th birthday that was December 5th.
Paul and Julie hadn't been to Bangkok for 10 years, so we first took in the amazing views from the 25th floor at Long Table bar.
We then went to the King's birthday celebration. The atmosphere was festive, with fireworks and lanterns being sent aloft.
What's a birthday party without balloons!
Of course, no Thai street celebration would be complete without food. Many vendors set up impromptu restaurants throughout the area. We grabbed a table and enjoyed a light and tasty meal.
Yellow is the color of royalty, and people were showing their love for the King by wearing yellow shirts. Even this cat is dressed in yellow.
The festivities were located in the same part of Bangkok that is witnessing the current anti-government protests. Both the protestors and the government had agreed to a truce so the nation could celebrate their King.
Many of the people we saw during the celebrations would return a few days later in one of the largest demonstrations in Bangkok's history. The protestors would force the Prime Minister to dissolve the parliament and call for new elections within 60 days.
On our last full day together we hired a long tail boat to take us through the canals.
We were not surprised to see more signs of the Thai's love for their King.
It was lots of fun to watch life on the canals from the boat.
Bangkok was mostly swampland until these canals were created in the 16th-19th centuries. While many canals have since been paved over, there are enough remaining to require signs identifying the canal names.
This woman had a traveling restaurant. She's using her cleaver to chop roasted duck.
Julie had visited the Snake Farm when she was in Bangkok 20 years ago. It was recently demolished and all that's left were amusing statues.
Anyone want to buy a waterfront fixer upper?
These young monks were enjoying a swim, and temples along the canals abounded.
We stopped at Wat Arun, the Temple of Dawn, and enjoyed views of the Chao Phraya River from the top. We had so much fun being in Bangkok with Paul and Julie!
At Wat Arun, Paul and Julie dressed up in Thai exotic costumes. Pretty convincing make-up, eh?
We ate like kings. One night we went to Bo.lan restaurant. The weather has been warm and comfortable, so we sat outside.
The chef at Bo.lan, Duongporn Songvisava, was recently named the best female Asian chef in the inaugural edition of Asia's 50 Best Restaurants. The amuse bouche course was memorable for the middle dish that tasted like macaroni and cheese but had been made with shrimp paste, coconut milk and rice noodles.
Through all the glasses you can see Paul with ya dong grachai dum, a Thai whiskey that tasted similar to sherry. The green shot is pandanus juice. This course was served with sour fruits like tamarind that we dipped in salt.
Our dear friends Paul and Julie are so busy with work and travel, as Paul's creative video production company, eMotion Studios, is thriving and demands a lot of time. We are so happy they were able to escape and enjoy a few days of frolicking in Thailand! We have many wonderful memories of our time together.
Long live the King! But don't forget the Queen(dahls)!
