Ton Sai

Blogger’s Guilt is tormenting me. It has been far too long since a regular blog occurred on this page. To punish myself, I promise to take myself out of my room and down to the beach, and to seat myself at the bamboo tables of the beach restaurant. I will contemplate the sand and the lapping waves for a short while and think about how bad I have been. I will then order a coconut shake and drink it. To show myself how serious I am, I will refuse the decorative purple flower that comes with the shake. (Maybe. Unless it would hurt the waiter’s feelings.) Once I have forced the shake down, I will further reprimand myself by eating a Thai green curry with chicken. If, by the end of the meal, I feel that I have not yet learned my lesson, I will have to play hard-ball and get a pancake with honey. If that doesn’t work then clearly I’ll have to do it all again tomorrow.

I have decreed Ton Sai to be the food capital of the world. I have fallen madly in love with Thai food. The green curries, the tom yum soup, the seafood, the chicken with oyster sauce, the ginger, the chili, the spicy plum sauce on steamed fish, the sticky rice with mango. The list goes on and on. And I am drooling. My only problem with Thai food so far, is the intensity of spiciness. My tongue spontaneously combusts somewhere around the level where the average Thai starts to warm up. Most of the time it’s ok, because you can ask for “little spice.” There was one occasion where the language barrier triumphed - I got no spice at all and the seafood soup ended up a bit bland. And sometimes the Thai concept of what a “little” spice is and my concept do not entirely match up. This means that I end up sweating, sneezing and sniffling my way through the meal. But damn – it’s pretty fine torture.

To my immense dismay, N eats the same thing almost every meal. He eats a chicken pad thai. It appalls me to see a thrilling menu spread out before him like a culinary adventure and every night it’s “Chicken pad thai, please.” I may have mentioned before that N is not exactly a reckless diner. I have to guinea pig everything first.
I am congratulating myself wildly because I have recently engineered a foray into tom yum territory. I had tom yum seafood soup. I did not tell him it was seafood. I gave him a spoonful with no tentacles, eyes or wavy feeler bits hiding in it. I bullied him into eating the spoonful of soup and he admitted he liked it. His repertoire of chicken pad thai and chicken with cashew nuts has now been expanded to include tom yum chicken soup.

Tom yum is spicy, hot and sour soup. It comes with veggies and (in my case) seafood. You can also have it with noodles. It is absolutely delicious. It is head explodingly spicy. Every time we order it we pester the waiter to ensure that there is only a LITLE bit of spice, please! And it still sometimes borders on blistering the tongue. Last night the waiter thought it was terribly funny to bring the tom yum and set it down with a cheerful “Tom yum soup – extra spicy!” And then he cackled all the way back to the kitchen at our faces. Ha ha! Very funny…

I have booked myself onto a half day cooking course. I am terribly excited about it. To my great surprise, N has agreed to come with me. I am sure it is only because I mentioned that one of the dishes you can choose to learn is pad thai noodles. It looks like it is going to be great fun. First we will learn about the main spices and ingredients that go into Thai foods (ginger, chili, lemongrass, oyster sauce, fish sauce and so on) and how to blend them. The course includes at trip to the local market where we will get to hunt the spices in their native territory. Then we rush back to the cookery school (Smart Cook Thai Cookery School) like maniacs, clutching our spices and rubbing our hands in glee and we learn to cook mouth-watering Thai food. And another quite fun thing is that they take photos of us and post them on their website (www.smartcookthailand.com) on the gallery. We will be cooking on Wednesday 02 December, once we leave Ton Sai.

It’s hard to believe we’ve been here a full month already. (Which reminds me exactly how long I’ve been a slack blogger.) Most of that time has been spent in Ton Sai. Ton Sai and Railay are two tiny areas in the Krabi province of Thailand. They are like little beach towns, only the word “town” is an overstatement. Railay is more developed, with some hotels and upmarket restaurants and a lovely beach. Ton Sai is a short walk away. To get from Railay to Ton Sai you wait for low tide and walk across the rocks or else you scramble up the jungle path, over the hill and down the path on the other side.
In this photo of Railay West Beach at low tide, you can see the patch of jungle between the sea and the tall cliff, wherein the jungle path lies. It’s steeper than it looks in the picture.


When you get to Ton Sai, it is just a couple of dirt roads lined with restaurants, laid back bars and some resorts. There’s a climbing school and a minimart or two. And that’s about it. You cannot access the area by road, only by boat, because of the limestone crags that rise up behind them. There are to be two bakkies and a couple of motorcycles that live on Ton Sai. It must have been an exciting trip getting them here. Railay has a couple of tractors to manage the transport of the baggage of the well heeled tourists from the boats to the shore. Ton Sai is definitely the more budget side of the area. We’re staying in Ton Sai. Obviously.

View of Ton Sai Beach and Railay West Beach in the far background:



We have a room in a small concrete block called the Garden View Resort. It’s nowhere near as charming looking as the other places in Ton Sai but we like it for other reasons.
One of the Garden View cats:


We have managed to fully mosquito-proof it. That is no small feat. The mosquitoes here are horrific. They are everywhere. They don’t stop biting me. We have sticky-taped up every hole in the ceiling and the insect coverings over the windows. We also have a fan that works and so our room is cool all day long. Our toilet flushes and we have a working shower. But best of all, we have almost 24 hour electricity. Our electricity goes off somewhere in the wee hours of the morning and usually returns some time before 9. Electricity here is dependant on generators. Power blips are frequent. Sometimes our fan turns languidly and sometimes it sounds like an aeroplane propeller. The lights dim and brighten like we are in the middle of a haunting. It’s very atmospheric. Many places only have electricity during the night. So sorry for you if you paid extra for a fan room. Guess you won’t be using in during the heat of the day. We have two large beds in our room. I guess they must be three quarter size. Either that or else they are Thai size double beds and we are just large Westerners. Our shower is cold and that makes my life a bit miserable. But it would be the same at any of the other resorts. Note – when I booked our hotel in Bali I booked a slightly more expensive room to get hot water. N scoffed and said that no one in Asia pays for hot water because it is always so hot here and you don’t need warm showers. Well, let me tell you that little piece of homespun wisdom only applies to men with short hair! Anyone who has had to stand naked under a stream of cold water for the time it takes to wet, lather and rinse long hair once for shampoo and once for conditioner will tell you that warm water is nice, even in the tropics. I am thoroughly delighted that I pooh poohed his "advice" and insisted on the warm water room for Bali.

Ton Sai Beach at sunset:


I find myself with much to say (unsurprising, given the month of slacking off) and not enough time to say it. I’m dropping off to sleep and so I will leave the rest of it for another post. I leave you with one of my favourite photos. It was taken at sunset as we walked across the rocks at low tide to get back to Ton Sai after swimming at Railay. I think that there are dragons in the rocks in Ton Sai…