One of the big tourist things to do in Thailand is to go see elephants.

There are any number of places you can do this, but there’s a wide range of ethicality on display.  A good rule of thumb is that if people are allowed to ride the elephants, than this is probably not a place you want to go.

We did our homework, and settled on a location called “Elephant Nature Park,” which is apparently the OG of ethical elephant sanctuaries, known for hosting elephants rescued from terrible working conditions and allowing them to live relatively unconstrained lives.

We were picked up from our hotel first thing in the morning, and discovered that our group would consist of – a young American couple from Virginia, an older American couple from Boston, a pair of Australian sisters, one of whom lived in Austria (no confusion there), and an airline pilot who had visited the sanctuary once before when she was about 14.

We learned all of this in the hour or so we had in the van to get acquainted on the way to the park, where we were greeted right away.

After a brief welcome, we were immediately set to work feeding watermelon and rice balls to the elephants.  Pretty much the entire day, we were shoving food into whichever elephant was nearby.  Elephants eat a lot, as it turns out – who knew?

After some time getting to know the elephants in the paddock (who were there because they were recuperating from medical attention), we were driven out to the nearby hills where the elephants hang out during the day.  We joined one particular elephant on a walk around the mountainside.

It wasn’t always clear where we were going next, but that’s because, as was quite obvious, our route was being determined by where the elephant decided to go, not by puny humans.

Also, any time we didn’t shove watermelon or bananas into her fast enough for her liking, she’d go over and start chowing down on nearby trees.

After a nice morning walk, we were taken to a lovely porch overlooking the valley for a delicious vegetarian lunch.  As we walked into the verandah, everyone in the party started coughing from the spicy aroma of cooking chilis.

Too be clear – all of us love spicy food and were quite used to it, but there was SO much chili smoke in the air, everyone had some amount of respiratory distress.

Thing is – the food wasn’t that spicy at all.  (delicious, but not terribly spicy) I’m convinced the chefs just tossed a whole bunch of chilis on the fire just as we arrived in order to have a little laugh at our expense.

The view was lovely, anyway.

After lunch, we walked back to our pickup point with our elephant friend, and then boarded the truck over to the main sanctuary building on the far side of the river, so we could meet the rest of the herd, and watch elephants fording the river to come home for the night.

And this is the point in the program where we realized that the older American couple on our tour were Elephant Nature Park groupies. They had apparently watched a million videos about the park and developed the sort of parasocial relationship with the elephants and the caretaker that most people reserve for podcasters.

But it meant they were rushing up to elephants they recognized, and calling out their names, and acting as if they knew them, while simultaneously utterly ignoring specific instructions from the caretakers about how to behave safely around animals that way as much as a backhoe.

We’d have been embarrassed for them, but then we remembered we’re Canadian.

Speaking of the caretaker, this is her.

Her name is Lek, and she’s apparently incredibly esteemed for her role in pioneering ethical treatment of rescue elephants.

I mentioned that our new friend the pilot had visited when she was 14.  She showed the photo to Lek, and Lek immediately insisted that they recreate it now.  It was really touching.

We watched a few more elephants ford the river, and then it was time to head back to Chiang Mai.

The whole day was an incredible experience.  To get to spend time around these huge animals without feeling like they were being coerced into putting on any kind of show was a real privilege. If you’re in northern Thailand, you should go.

We got back to Chiang Mai, and were faced with the perennial question – how to narrow down where to eat?  Well, we’d only had crispy pork once so far this trip, so it was CLEARLY time to rectify this fact.  We walked up to another Benny-recommended, internet famous restaurant in an industrial area north of town, Neng’s Clay Oven Roasted Pork.

And boy howdy was this another winner…

I can’t even with the food in this country.

After this, we walked back down to our hotel, which was now bang in the center of a huge Sunday night market in central Chiang Mai.  We pushed our way through the crowds looking at crafts and generally enjoying the sights, sounds, smells.  Sadly, not taking any PICTURE of the sights, sounds, or smells.

We did also finally manage to find a vendor selling the coconut pancakes I’d been wanting to try but hadn’t yet.

Worth it.

For our first day’s excursions around Chiang Mai, we started at the east gate and headed east.  Today we decided to start at the south gate, and head south.

The south gate has a market that’s notable as a great place to get breakfast.  It certainly seemed like it, although we got decision paralysis pretty fast.  But hunger eventually got the better of us.  At various stalls we grabbed some sausage, a filled pastry sort of like a samosa, and these amazing purple donuts.

Seriously – if we’d run into these things first, I suspect we’d have just gotten a couple of dozen and called it good for the morning.

First off the bat was a little geocaching.  I won’t bore you with specifics, but there were two in particular that I wanted to find for achievement unlocked purposes.  We found the first one, and ended up replacing the second one ourselves when it turned up missing.  A mint box for an obscure music technology company with a coffeeshop receipt is a perfectly fine cache, right?

From there, we headed south into the silversmithing district – Leigh wanted to look at more pretty shiny things, and there was also a specific temple we wanted to check out.

That would be THIS bonkers thing:

This is Wat Sri Suphan, the Sliver Temple.  And it certainly is.  The entire inside and outside of the temple is covered in a mix of silver and aluminum.

I had to take this picture, since unlike MOST of the temples we visited, this one did not allow women inside.

Now to be clear – while this religious site is hundreds of years old, the silver ordination hall dates from the 21st century, so it’s not exactly an ancient relic.  Still pretty impressive, though.

The reason this particular temple is covered in silver is, as I mentioned that this district of Chiang Mai is especially associated with silver jewelry.  We saw a few different silver making classes in progress as we walked around, and Leigh was able to have a browse in half a dozen different interesting shops.  By this time, it was starting to approach lunchtime, and we wanted to try another signature dish of the region – Khao Soi.

Khao Soi is a curry soup with a mix of fresh and deep fried noodles and usually a meat such as beef or chicken.  You can get it everywhere in Chiang Mai, but Benny had recommended a place not to far from where we were, so we hoofed it down to Khao Soi Lung Prakit Kad Kom.

Now, we only picked this place because it was on the list of restaurants Benny had sent us before the cooking class, but it turns out this place is reasonably well known from having appeared on the first episode of “Somebody Feed Phil.”  Which is apparently a television show of some sort.

Possibly due to this notoriety, there was a big crowd of folks waiting for a seat, many of whom were confused tourists like ourselves who were trying to figure out how the whole process worked.  Do we wait in line?  Is there a list? How do we order?

Eventually, however, we worked it all out, and found ourselves rewarded with some of the best soup we’ve ever had.

I know we keep using superlatives like that, and I apologize if it’s getting old, but I promise absolutely every one of them is deserved.  Thailand is an amazing place to eat.

Oh, and this soup was about two bucks Canadian, to boot.

From there, we started walking back up towards town.  There were still plenty of shrines to see.

But we were starting to wilt a bit from the heat, so we ducked into a nearby coffee bar / donut shop / recording studio.

As you do.

Seriously, Chiang Mai is great.  We could live here.  (Except for the fact that apparently it’s an unlivable smoky hellscape two or three months out of the year during the agricultural burning season.)

At this point, we thought it was high time we actually had a gawp at some of the sights inside the city walls, so we headed up there to look at some temples.

I’m sorry the running commentary has sort of dried up at this point – these photos kind of speak for themselves.

At least, this one certainly does:

We probably visited half a dozen temples over the course of the afternoon, each one more absurdly opulent than the last. 

By dinner time, we had also managed to visit the north gate, so only one left to go.  We headed down to a restaurant recommended by one of Leigh’s friends to have a delicious dinner of sizzling seafood plate and duck in mango curry.

Trust me – that’s what you’d have seen here if we’d remembered to take a picture before we scarfed it down.

Surely that must be enough silver and food for one day, right?  Nope – time for the night market!

This is the central street in the silversmithing district that we had walked down earlier in the day, but it was utterly transformed at night – something like a kilometer of stalls selling beautiful hand made handicrafts, cheap plastic tchotch, amazing food, terrible food, massage implements, and so much other stuff.

Leigh found a necklace that spoke to her, and I found a cinnamon roti.

What’s not to love?

Chiang Mai is the second largest city in Thailand, but the vibe couldn’t be more different than downtown Bangkok.  It has few to no skyscrapers, no subway system, and the vibe is just generally more laid back.

We stayed near the east gate in the old city wall, and began our explorations in that direction.

Chiang Mai definitely has a bit of a hipster vibe to it, as evidenced by the fact that there’s a coffee shop every other storefront.  Of course, coming from the Pacific Northwest, we felt right at home.

One thing the PNW doesn’t have, however, is locally grown coffee.  I had a phenomenal light roast that was closer to fruit juice than the motor oil they serve at Tim Hortons.  Even Leigh admitted she didn’t mind it, which is saying something.

We headed east on a mission to see what we could see, and possibly investigate a few more jewelry stores.

One thing we saw was a Buddhist temple with Donald Duck eating Pad Thai.  Yes, really.

Now, what we would come to discover is that Chiang Mai has a LOT of temples.  Like, a LOT a lot.  Almost as many as coffee shops, that’s how many.

But this was still our first day here, so we hadn’t been overwhelmed by the omnipresent maximalism yet.  I mean, just look at the building behind ol’ Donald there.

Or the one literally across the street.

Or this one.

This is all just stuff we saw on the first morning within a one block radius of each other.

The amount of sheer unabashed ornamentation per square block in Chiang Mai is absolutely unreal. I expect as one gets farther from the old quarter it settles down a bit, but I’m not certain of that fact.

But all this opulence had helped us work up and appetite, and we discovered that one of the restaurants that we had tagged in advance was handy, and just opening up for lunch.

That would be Maadae Slow Fish Kitchen, which we can toss on the pile of “absurdly cheap Michelin recommended restaurants” we encountered this trip.  We had a spicy pomelo and fish salad, and mussels.

Both were amazing, but Leigh puts the mussels in her top three dishes for the trip, which, for this trip, is really saying something.

Continuing our random stroll eastward, we came unexpectedly upon “The Museum of Broken Relationships.”  I am not making this up.

This was a two story museum housing a few dozen relatively ordinary objects.  A doll.  A pair of shoes.  A watch.

But the card on the wall next to each one, rather than being any information about the object itself, was a personal story from the owner of the object.  And the stories were universally about relationships that had been broken, either due to infidelity, growing apart, death, illness, or other causes.  Some of the stories were funny, some were touching, and all of them were intensely personal.

It was a lot.

How about a donut shaped like a frog?

Whew.  That’s better.  Except that this angle makes me look like I have six chins.  Well, after the amount we ate, that’s not outside the realm of possibility.

Oh, and the donut came with a delicious pandan custard to dip it in.

We spent the rest of the afternoon bonking around markets, jewelry shops, a chocolate shop, and a few more temples. Also whatever the hell this was.

But –  we had to get back to our hotel, because we were being picked up for our second cooking class of the trip.  (And the first one we actually planned in advance.)

Unlike the cooking class in Ao Nang, which was a last minute schedule improvisation, this one we carefully researched in advance.  It would be a private cooking class – just us and the chef (and as it turns out, several members of her family) – and it would be focused primarily on northern Thai food.

We were contacted ahead of time to select the four dishes we wanted to try, and apparently our selections made an impression on our host, as she said she was pleasantly surprised to see that we didn’t have a pad Thai or a basil stir fry on the list. (Not that there’s anything WRONG with those dishes, but we wanted something a bit more specific to the region.)

We were picked up at our hotel by a nice woman driving a songthaew who turned out to be the sister of the chef.  She drove us to a market well south of downtown.  This was already a nice change – unlike the group classes being herded around the touristy markets, Benny (our host) met us and took just the two of us around a market clearly only populated by locals.

After a few tasty, tasty samples, we made our way back to Benny’s mom’s house to start cooking.  We had chosen four dishes with some overlap in their base curry pastes.

But some differences, too.  The first one includes an ingredient I don’t know if I’ll be able to find, even in Vancouver – Thai prickly ash, or Makhwaen. The third one has compressed, fermented, soybean.  There were some other differences too.  But we pounded them all to a pulp anyway.

By the way, this is Benny.

As soon as we started ingredient prep we hit one sure sign this was a much more serious cooking class than the one in Ao Nang:

The knives were sharp.

The entire experience was delightful.  Benny kept up a running conversation about the food we were making, the background, how it related to her own family, and how it was different from central and southern Thai food.  Benny’s partner and sisters were on hand to help out and also make conversation as well.

And here was our final spread.

The dishes were a spicy northern style Laab, a pounded jackfruit salad (Tam Kanoon), a tomato, pork, and chili dip (Nam Prik Ong), and an herbal pork curry soup (Gaeng Om). Also pictured – spicy pork rinds.  Benny would have at that point left us to enjoy our meal, but where’s the fun in that?  We asked her to join us, and a fine time was had by all.

Oh, and Benny’s partner also made us cocktails, including a “Benny Tango” and a “Sexy Benny.”

In a trip filled with memorable experiences, this was flat out one of the best.  We cannot recommend Benny’s cooking classes enough if you happen to be in Chiang Mai.

We would even recommend going to Chiang Mai expressly for the experience.

Here’s the link: Benny’s Home Cooking Chiang Mai

It was time to return to the mainland after our somewhat soggy sojurn on Koh Yao Noi, so we caught yet another songthaew down to the pier, where we were able to spend a bit more time inspecting the art than we had on the way in.

Yep, that’s some birds and a crustacean, all right, although not even the largest crustacean sculpture in the past three days for us. The birds are hornbills, and while we did see some ACTUAL hornbills on our walks around the island, the pictures turned out too blurry to post.

Our ferry arrived and deposited us in Ao Nang, the beach town we had departed from two days prior. We didn’t have a flight to catch until that evening, so we had all day to explore the town.

The only problem? Ao Nang is awful.

Have you been to Virginia Beach? It’s that with Pad Thai and longtails. If you haven’t been to Virginia Beach, imagine Ao Nang, but without the Pad Thai and longtails. Hope that helps.

We didn’t take many PICTURES of how awful it was, because why would you, but it’s basically a giant beach tourist trap. So we decamped to a coffee shops to have smoothies and maybe get some quality internet time in.

While Leigh had some actual serious internetting to do, I wandered off in search of a geocache, so we could tick the box for the province, and push our “most distant cache found from home” number above 7500 mi.

This involved walking past about a billion tourist oriented pad Thai places, t-shirt shops, cannabis bars, massage parlors, and t-shirt shops. But at the end of this walk, I arrived at the Monkey Trail. This is a trail (with monkeys) that eventually leads to the nearby Railay Beach.

I only needed to walk about a quarter mile along it to get to the cache. Or should I say UP it?

Honestly, despite the gaps in the stairs, it still would have been fine, except for all the people clogging the path because they WEREN’T up to the gaps in the stairs. Or were attempting this barefoot. Or were just generally being idiots.

Oh, and there were definitely monkeys.

Thing is, these monkeys made me hate people that much more. I watched half of a couple line up a photo of their partner without telling them that this was going on behind them:

That backpack was fully zipped when the monkey started.

At any rate, we did at least manage to find some recommendations for one or two places to eat that weren’t tourist traps, and by luck, one of them was just a block from the coffee shop where I had left Leigh.

We was NOT expecting another high point meal in this awful place, but we definitely got one.

Whole fried fish with spicy mango salad, stir fried pako fern, and two dipping sauces. I don’t remember what the red one was, because we were too busy restraining ourselves from ordering shots of the green one. I looked it up later, and it’s called Nam Jim Talay. Definitely a banger. (The restaurant is called “Family Thaifood and Seafood” if you find yourself in Ao Nang, hopefully waiting for transport out.)

At this point it was after lunch, our flight wasn’t until early evening, and we wanted nothing more than to get the hell out of town. We concocted a plan to get a Grab to the Krabi airport, store our luggage there, and then take another Grab to a temple we wanted to see, hang out there for a little bit, and then get another Grab back to the airport. That would have been a lot of going around in circles and waiting for Grabs, so it wasn’t a great plan. Luckily, it turns out all those tourist counters in Ao Nang ARE good for something, because instead of that ridiculous plan, we walked up to the nearest tourist counter and asked if she could hook us up with a driver for the rest of the day who would take us to the temple, hang out and wait for us, and then drive us to the Krabi airport.

Yep. 1000 baht (40 bucks Canadian) and they were there in five minutes.

The driver brought us to Tiger Cave temple, a beautiful temple at the base of a hill which is the starting point for 1,260 stairs to a shrine at the TOP of a hill.

With just enough time to make it to the top and back, we started walking.

For the record, 1,260 is a LOT of stairs.

About 200 stairs up we hit The Monkey Zone. I mean, it was just a zone with some monkeys in it, but The Monkey Zone sounds more dramatic. One of said monkeys punished one of our fellow climbers for his inattention (he was talking on his phone) by dramatically swooping down and stealing a whole-ass bottle of coconut water out of his bag.

The views got more and more spectacular as we climbed. At the same time, we got older and older.

But with just about ten minutes to spare before we HAD to start back down, we reached the top!

Worth it.

After an all too brief sojourn at the top, we turned around and staggered back down to the bottom of the hill. One more monkey picture, and it was time to fly to our last stop in Thailand, Chiang Mai!

We landed in Chiang Mai fairly late, and after dropping our stuff at our hotel, headed out to see what was still open that could feed us. We found a good Chinese noodle joint, scarfed down some noodles, and headed back to our hotel to crash.

One of the big things to do as a tourist in southern Thailand is to hire a long-tail boat to take you to scenic places – beaches, islands, snorkeling, jazzercise, whatever. The reason it’s called a “long tail” is that the propulsion method is basically a large gasoline engine on a stick. Heck, we’ve put every other thing on a stick this trip, why not?

Despite spending the entire day on one, we didn’t get a single decent picture of said boat, so if you’re curious go check Wikipedia, I guess.

Where were WE going on this boat? There are a number of scenic islands near Koh Yao Noi, and we booked a common tourist circuit leading through several of them in Phang Nga bay.  (Having NOT gone to visit the James Bond museum when we were in Interlaken, we decided to continue that trend by not going to “James Bond Island” while in Thailand.)

We had booked this tour via GetYourGuide, so all we had to do was stand on the front steps of our hotel, and sure enough – a songthaew appeared and took us to a dock, where we were ushered onto our private long tail. The driver obviously did this itinerary every day, so even though we didn’t speak any Thai and he didn’t speak much English, it was pretty clear what was supposed to be happening next at each step.

We get on the boat, dump our stuff in the cabin, and are directed to a two person couch on the front, where we could recline and watch the world go by as we bounced over the water to our first stop.

And it WAS a trifle bouncy. The endless downpour of the previous two days had mercifully abated, but it was still grey and somewhat choppy. Also, longtails are LOUD. The driver could have busted into the Thai version of “O Solo Mio” (“หรือเพียงแค่ของฉัน,” according to Google Translate), and we probably wouldn’t have heard him.

The first and largest island of the tour was Hong Island. We started by motoring into a beautiful secluded cove to look around. It really was stunning.

And we can’t exactly complain about how many tourists there were – after all, we were part of the problem. Honestly, it’s probably a lot worse during the high season when it hasn’t been raining for weeks.

Still, this particular cove REALLY felt like “It’s a Small World” – an endless parade of boats on a fixed route in, one circle around the lagoon, and out.  We still got our postcard shot, though, because of course we did.

From there, we swung around to the far side of the island, and disembarked onto a floating pier. Because the island is technically part of a national park, there’s a park ranger at a folding table on the pier collecting your (quite nominal) entry fee. We had an hour to spend on the island, so our choices were to hang out on the beach, go for a nature walk, or climb a billion stairs.

It’s us – of course we opted for the stairs. At least we weren’t… optimistic?…  enough to try 460 metal stairs barefoot like some of the folks we watched.

And the view from the top was definitely worth it.

We climbed back down, made our way back to the boat, and headed north a short distance to (checks map, because I had no idea at the time where we where) Koh Lao Ka? Maybe?  At any rate, it was apparently time for the “snorkeling” portion of our tour.

While Leigh had been snorkeling before, I never had. I remember being a semi-competent swimmer in the distant past, but it had been a very long time.

More to the point, the ocean was a bit rough for swimming comfortably, and very rough for visibility. We climbed into the ocean and I realized that I was EXTREMELY rusty to be handling even the light seas we were experiencing, but also that there really wasn’t anything much to see. We did catch a glimpse of a single black and yellow striped fish, barely visible from two feet away.

I would very much like to try snorkeling again in better conditions, but as it was, I was exhausted, and probably swallowed more salt water than was strictly healthy. At least there were no jellyfish.

Back on the boat, we were handed some fresh pineapple, and given my exhaustion at that point, it was probably the best pineapple I had ever eaten.

From there we puttered around a few more beautiful islands until we reached our lunch stop, Koh Phakibah. This one I’m reasonably sure about, since you can recognize the beach in Google satellite view.

And a very nice beach it is, too.  The sun even came out for a bit while we ate our chicken fried rice and mango sticky rice. We didn’t have the place to ourselves, but there were only a few other parties on the beach, and there was more than enough room for us to have our own little patch of sand.

There was one moment of entertainment, when a shriek from one of the other tourists indicated that she had not been expecting to have her lunch stolen by a monkey. But that’s what happened.

Speaking of monkeys – after we finished our lunch, we climbed back aboard our longtail.  There was still plenty of pineapple left from our snack – after all, one pineapple is a LOT of pineapple for two people to eat at one go. But our driver had a purpose for this pineapple. A vision, if you will.

And that vision was “why not chuck this pineapple at a bunch of monkeys?”

The monkeys were clearly used to this, as they swam out to meet the longtail, and we hurled fruit at them while trying not to drop our phones in the ocean.

The location of this monkey fest was Koh Ka Mit island, FWIW.

From there, we were treated to some more spectacular geology at Koh Cha Bang, and Koh Han Tu.

And with that, it was time to head back.  The official tour description was for slightly longer, and listed another island, but we definitely feel like we got our money’s worth. The one thing that would have really improved the tour was better weather, and we couldn’t figure out the right app to use to order that.

Back on the island, it was early afternoon, and mercifully not raining, so we decided to do some more exploration.

I picked up a bag of crispy crepes, and despite being fully aware that it was probably a bad idea, ate the entire thing in one go. (Turned out this was not in any way a bad idea.)

We walked up to a park on the northwest shore of the island, and had a lovely view from this pier.

And were then followed around by an ever growing swarm of cats that started cute, but ended somewhat alarming.

From there we wandered over to the main drag and explored a bit. There were a number of street food vendors, a few coffee shops, and a 7-11, because of course there was.

For dinner, we took another songthaew to get to a family run restaurant not too far from where we had been the night before. This time it was a Panang curry and a beef stir fry.

All in all, a very nice day.

One of the reasons you come to the south of Thailand is to experience the islands. There are a wide range of possibilities, from party havens covered in a three deep carpet of Instagrammers, to more peaceful islands with a higher proportion of locals.

We opted for one of the latter, or at least as peaceful as you could get within an hour’s boat ride of Phuket and Ao Nang. (More on Ao Nang itself later.)

After experiencing more or less continuous rain the previous day, we were not happy to discover that the downpour in Krabi was still ongoing.

However, after a twenty minute Grab ride, we arrived at our departure pier for the ferry to our island to discover that while gloomy, it was at least no longer pouring. And the beach by the ferry terminal was lovely.

The ferry terminal itself was absolutely bonkers.

Fortunately, they had “getting confused tourists onto the correct boat” down to a science. Everyone was herded quickly and efficiently to the correct boat operator, and from there onto the correct boat with their luggage. They also put stickers on everyone so the boat drivers would know where to throw us off.

And in our case that was Koh Yao Noi, which means “Little Long Island.”  (You’ll never guess what the nearby Koh Yao Yai means.) We had read that it was a quieter island perfect for folks like us who want to experience southern Thailand, with its different food culture and lifestyle, but don’t have time to get truly remote.

This still felt pretty remote. We were picked up by our first songthaew of the trip, but definitely not the last. A songthaew is a pickup truck which, by virtue of covering the bed and putting in seats, has been converted to a taxi.

Not super common in Bangkok that we observed, they were everywhere in the South and around Chiang Mai.

Our hotel was a nice quiet assortment of huts around a central pond, not too far from the port.

This was our room:

And here are some cuddly friends we made around the grounds:

To be fair, that second pile of NOPE was not in our room, which was entirely cuddly friend free for the duration of our stay. (The monitor lizard was ALSO not in our room, but that probably goes without saying.)

Now settled, we set out for a walk to explore the island and find some lunch. Definitely a quiet, rural vibe.

…aaand then it started pouring rain again. We took refuge on the terrace of a local restaurant, and set out to discover if southern Thai food would wow us as much as what we had in Bangkok.

We needn’t have worried.

That would be stir fried squid in black sauce made with squid ink, and crabs in lime sauce.  Absolutely heavenly, and being able to watch the rain on the water while we ate was much better than slogging around in it.

Given that, we asked the restaurant to call us another songthaew, and we went back to our room, where we spent the next five hours or so cursing the rain and wishing the hotel wifi hadn’t gone out, so we’d have at least had THAT going for us.

Still – the fact that this remote island in Phang Nga bay normally has internet is obviously a different story than travelling when we were younger would have told, so not TOO much to complain about.

Dinner time rolled around, and we had the hotel call us our third songthaew of the day so we could go visit another local restaurant.

Massaman fish curry, and spicy sour deep fried seafood over noodles. What’s not to love?

One truly entertaining thing did happen during this meal. The restaurant was, like basically every restaurant on Koh Yao that we observed, an open air patio. We were relatively close to the road, but it was dark, so we were essentially in a little island of light, next to a dark road, with dark trees across the street.

At one point, the owner comes out of the kitchen and walks up to the hostess, to whom he hands a large knife and points out into the darkness. The hostess takes the knife, and sets out, walking across the road, out of our little oasis of cheer, and into the blackness out of sight.

With a knife.

We have no idea what this is about – is she going off to harvest a pineapple? Slaughter a chicken? Have a dance fight to the lilting guitar stylings of Eddie Van Halen?

A few minutes later she reappears with a banana leaf.

Welp, mystery solved. We finished eating and took a taxi back to our hotel to begin praying for better weather on the morrow.

After four days in Thailand, it was time to move on to our next destination. We wanted to spend some time in the southern part of the country, and had originally booked a few days on the island of Koh Samui.

Then we realized that Koh Samui’s monsoon season runs a month later than the rest of the country, so we changed our plans and rebooked to the other side of the isthmus, where it was much less likely to be raining.

We caught an early Grab to the Bangkok airport, and then a plane to the city of Krabi, where…

…it was absolutely pouring rain, and would be for the next two days straight. (Note from Leigh: To be fair, it was raining everywhere in southern Thailand while we were there, with significant flooding in some places, so it’s not like we chose poorly.) Also there’s gorillas wearing human clothes on the traffic lights for some reason. (Only at this intersection, to be sure.)

So we went looking for something to do in Krabi in the rain, and ended up at a museum of beads.

The bead exhibit was interesting, and probably killed half an hour. There was also art on display by some local artists, and a whole group of schoolkids who kept waving at us and saying hello.

Also a dinosaur wearing a hat.

I sort of wonder if it’s friends with the gorillas.

From there, we squelched back into town and had our first pad Thai of the trip at a food stall in the local market. Forgot to take a picture of it though. That’s OK, because not only would this not be our last pad Thai of the trip, it wouldn’t even be our last one that day.

Upon returning to our room, we started searching for other things to do of an evening in Krabi when the heavens have opened up, and we decided to book a cooking class. Now, we already had a cooking class scheduled for later in the trip, which we’ll get to in due course, but that one was focused on specifically northern Thai food, and was unlikely to have much overlap with the sort of class that you can book the day of.

I don’t want to knock this class too much – it was cheap and cheerful, we met some nice folks, and we made some Pad Thai. What’s not to like?

We each made a curry, a stir fry, a noodle dish, and an appetizer all of which were quite tasty. The host clearly does this exact script three times a day, eight days a week, and had it absolutely down pat… until someone asked a question not on his script. He also had an unfortunate habit of referring to mushroom powder as “happy powder.”

The food was delicious, but it all felt very Disneyland. Also, although the class was supposed to include transport, they called us in advance to let us know that due to traffic and the weather, we should just get a taxi and they would reimburse us. Except once we got there, no one actually AT the class could follow what we were saying when we asked about the reimbursement. So that was a bit weird.

Still, delicious Thai food, and it beat the hell out of sitting in our room listening to the rain. After getting back to our hotel, we put on our raincoats and headed out to check out the night market. We didn’t remember to take any pictures of the night market, but it was bright and cheerful and smelled amazing.

We DID take a picture of this crab statue, which was very dramatic in the spotlights.

In preparation for this trip, we watched a whole lot of videos. In addition to the aforementioned Cal, we also watched videos from someone named “Bangkok Jack,” an Austrian-Thai dual citizen living in Chiang Mai, Mark Wiens, and whatever else we could filter out of the influencer drivel and AI slop.

One of our favorites, recommended to us by the folks at Chinese Cooking Demystified (great channel, check it out) is a channel called OTR Food and History, which is based in Bangkok, and does long-form videos about… well, guess.

One of the most intriguing videos from them that we watched was on Koh Kret, a small island about 30 km up the river from Bangkok. It was settled by Mon refugees from Myanmar and then cut off from the mainland for a long time, leading to a fascinating hybrid culture that has some dishes not readily available anywhere else in Thailand.

We planned to visit the island’s markets to try local street food, look at pottery shops, maybe walk a circuit of the island, and then in the evening we had reservations at a restaurant on the far side that is only reachable by boat, even from elsewhere on Koh Kret.

Spoiler: We only did some of that.

The route up there from our hotel in Chinatown is a bit convoluted.  First we walked down to the ferry, and snapped a few pictures of amazing street art on the way.

These were all on Song Wat Road, a funky little street by the river in Chinatown that we really liked.

From there, we boarded a ferry to take us as far up the river as we could go by boat.

We noticed that the river seemed to be very high – the ferry was slowing down dramatically as it came up to bridges, and was very carefully passing under the very center of the arches, with inches to spare.  This turned out to be an unfortunate foreshadowing of what we would find on Koh Kret.

But first we had to GET to Koh Kret.  After forty minutes or so on the ferry, we reached the northern terminus of the line, which turned out to be right next to the prison where foreign detainees are usually kept. The things you learn from geocache descriptions.

However, not wanting to change our accommodation plans, we opted instead to take a Grab (the Thai equivalent of Lyft) another ten minutes north to the point on the riverbank opposite Koh Kret, where you could catch a ferry to the island.

That small tower, or stupa, isn’t supposed to be leaning like that, but it’s been doing it since 1891, so that’s not particularly new. However, notice the water level – that WAS new, and as it turns out, quite bad.

When we got across the river we found that major parts of the island were flooded. We didn’t take many pictures, because that would feel exploitative, but the waterside markets which mark the route away from the dock in both directions were knee-deep.

We were able to wander about the temple grounds, which were just high enough to be OK.

There was a dry elevated walking path into the interior of the island, but we only walked down it a little ways – clearly no one on the island was going to be happy to see us gawping at their unfortunate situation.

So instead we walked back to the ferry dock, where there were still a few enterprising vendors set up to sell food. (And weirdly, the coffee shop in the temple was still open.)

This was an absolutely delicious boat noodle, which we forgot to actually photograph before we had eaten most of it. This will be a running theme going forward.

As mentioned, our dinner reservations were on Koh Kret as well. The restaurant we had booked is ONLY accessible by boat, even from on the island, and we had a water taxi coming at five to take us around. However, there didn’t seem to be much point in hanging out. So we cancelled our taxi (we’d pick up the local ferry by the restaurant instead), returned to the mainland, and went looking for something to do.

The Thai board game store was interesting, but since they didn’t have any demo games to play, that didn’t kill much time.

Which is how we ended up at the cat cafe.

The board game store and the 30 degree weather gave us the idea that it might be nice to find a cafe with board games we COULD play and maybe just cool off for a while. Google Maps came up with “KuppuGamu.” Pretty sure that’s not Thai.  Maybe it’s what Thai people think Japanese sounds like in English?

At any rate, the Grab took us down several different secondary roads to a gated housing community. Then INSIDE the community, where the driver had to tell the guard where we were going. Then down several more suburban streets to what gave every appearance of being just an actual house on a suburban cul de sac.

I can’t show you a street view shot, of course, because I guarantee that car has never made it back here.

Which meant the folks in this cafe were QUITE surprised by a pair of random Canadian tourists on their doorstep. This place is NOT generally on the tuktuk tours.

But they were super nice, and after we purchased some yuzu sodas to meet the cover charge, we had a lovely time hanging out with the cats and playing Marvel Splendor. (Which, surprisingly, does actually seem to be a slight improvement on the original.)

After an hour or so, it was time to call another Grab and catch our ferry over to Rorsor127, the fine dining restaurant featured in the OTR video at the start of the post.

I have no idea what I’m doing in this picture.  I probably didn’t have any idea what I was doing at the time, either.

Rorsor127 is an amazing restaurant. A former vacation home for a prince, it features Royal Thai cuisine, which is a quite distinct category from the street food we’d been stuffing ourselves with. We had a prix fixe meal consisting of 4 appetizers, 5 shared mains, and a dessert.

But not before enjoying drinks and a sunset.

And now on to the food. First up, an amuse-bouche. Sadly, we don’t actually remember what it was, but it was definitely delicious.  We’ll just take as read that everything was amazing from this point.

Eggplant Thai salad on crispy rice sheet with fried red ant eggs:

Western-style fried truffle and crab meat croquette.  This one came under a bell jar full of smoke, which was neat.

Steamed rice mixed with chili paste served with Thai garnishes:

Thai rice noodles with sweet and sour curry. (Mom’s secret recipe!) (The chef’s mom, not MY mom.)

And for the shared dishes – tamarind chili pork paste served with Thai omelet, ku-lao fish, and vegetables, garden cassia curry with pork, gang run juan spicy shrimp paste soup (beef for Leigh, pork for me), stir fried green curry paste with Chai Nat featherback fish balls, stuffed with Chaiya salted egg yolks, and stir-fried shrimp with seasonal vegetables topped with crispy pork cracklings and fried garlic.

Envy us. This meal was un-fing-believable.

Oh, and candle-smoked coconut milk over Thai jelly for dessert.

Throughout this absolutely stunning meal (which, to be clear, was being served to a total of ten guests, that being close to max capacity for this restaurant) we were chatted with by both the owners and the chef, who kept coming out to tell us about the food and generally make us feel welcomed.

This is an experience we will definitely keep with us for a long time.

And from there, boat to Grab back to the hotel, and time to pack up to move on to our next stop in Thailand!

OK, right up front, if you are planning a trip to Bangkok, do not pass Go, do not collect 200 Baht, do not EVER play Monopoly (it’s a TERRIBLE game, seriously. In this dissertation, I shall…). Just immediately go to Chili Paste tours and book their “Old Bangkok Food and Culture Walk.”

I would say just trust me, but we can do better than that.  Buckle up. But not literally, because tuktuks don’t have seatbelts.

Chin, our guide, picked us up from our hotel promptly at 9 AM. We had a tuktuk driver with us for the entire day, who would go off and park when we set out on foot, and then rejoin us when it was time to shuttle to another part of the city. For the record, Bangkok traffic is terrifying, especially in a tiny vehicle with no doors or windows. But also kinda thrilling.

We started the day by walking down a narrow alley to get to a different, narrower alley to discover a home with a small cart outside the door and about six people gathered around inside making dim sum. Or rather just one kind of dim sum – pork shu mai.  Apparently, they make thousands of these things every day, and then granddad goes out and sells them until they are gone. Which doesn’t take long, because they are amazing.

This was off to a hell of a start. What next? Coffee? Sure, I love coffee. Leigh, on the other hand, opted for an iced tea, which turned out to be a Thai iced tea that came in a bag.

How about visiting a shop where they make Chinese sausage?

We got to taste the sausage, as well as go inside and watch some of the sausage being made, too. I don’t know what everyone complains about – it was fine.

Oh look – a big vat of chicken feet!

Time for some flaky pastries? Sure!

Or perhaps some noodle wonton soup, with sausage and crabmeat!

Oh look – deep fried sprats and chicken skin – here, take a bag of each!

If this post seems a little short on words and description it’s because I’m trying to convey the sheer overwhelming PACE of this tour. At this point, we were still entirely on foot from our starting point.

It was becoming clear that while Chin definitely had some fixed stops she did every tour, there was also a GREAT deal of improvisation going on. (“ADHD” would possibly not also be an inapt description, but in the best and most delicious possible way.) We’d be walking down the street, or through a market, and she’d stop and go “Oh hey!  Look at this – this is delicious, you should try it!” And suddenly, we were.

We’ve been on food tours before (for example, in Prague) where there were a number of carefully curated stops, and each shop had been alerted to expect us and had a specific sample platter ready to go. And don’t get me wrong – those are great! But this was NOT that. While many of the merchants knew Chin, not all of them appeared to, and there’s no way the random careening from food to food was an entirely preplanned itinerary.

It was amazing. It also meant that as the day went on, we slowly accumulated a bag full of snacks we had no hope of eating in our one remaining day in Bangkok with access to a refrigerator.

Also – just to be clear. All of the pictures (and eating) so far took place in under an hour.

At this point, we boarded the tuktuk and made our way to a heavily Vietnamese area north of the palace where it was time for lunch. Well, I mean, we had to have a snack first to get ready.

Sweetened beef floss. Delicious. Everything was delicious. But now it was time for lunch.

Which turned out to be a whole-ass Vietnamese FEAST.

At this point we could have been done with the tour, and it would already have been an amazing day. But this is a day-long tour. We were only half finished. However, perhaps bowing to biological necessity, Chin took us to a nearby monastery complex for a bit of the “culture” part of the food and culture tour.

Interestingly, the murals in this particular temple were done in a much more Western style than was typical at many of the places we visited. We also wandered through the lovely peaceful grounds of the adjacent residential complex, the relaxing calm broken only by the shrieks from the school playground across the street and the constant roar of construction equipment and motorcycle engines.

Leigh had asked if Chin knew of anyone making or selling silver jewelry, so at this point we made a stop at a charming little shop where she bought a few pairs of earrings. (Note from Leigh: I was not intending for this to become part of the food tour — I just thought she might provide a recommendation that we could follow up on later! At this point, though, we were happy to have the break from eating.)

But enough of this calm. Back to the food!

How about some daifuku?

A nice bowl of offal soup?

How about some pineapple on a stick? (And by “some”, I mean “what appeared to be an entire damn pineapple chopped up and thrust into our hands.)

Some sort of sausage wrapped in a leaf with palm sugar? Why not?

At this point we were wandering around a market area, and we took a quick break to visit the Buddhist shrine inside the market. (After being handed a coconut cake for later, of course.)

We didn’t get any great pictures of the shrine itself, but this is the hallway underneath.

Stop!

Smoothie time!

We were first handed a tiny green fruit to try.

This is a bilimibi fruit. It can be eaten out of hand, and is sour and delicious by itself. But, and hear me out, what if you blended it with fingerroot (sort of like ginger but different), passion fruit, pineapple, and roselle?

You get literally the best smoothie I have ever had in my life, that’s what.

Holy crap.  I will have DREAMS about this smoothie.

We continued to drink this as we were ushered around the corner to a fruit stand where we were issued not one, but TWO coconuts. You know, so we could compare them.

Additionally, it was one old coconut and one young coconut, so we were prepared to perform any sort of coconut exorcism that might end up being required.

Back in the tuktuk, and off to the south side of town to visit a small shopping mall. This served a number of purposes – it let Leigh look around a few more jewelry shops (although the private one earlier was definitely more interesting), it let us spend a little time in the AC, and it gave us another small break from stuffing ourselves. We still wandered around and LOOKED at food, however, and the “oh look at this!” “oh look at this” “oh look at this!” was still on full display.

But soon enough, it was time to resume eating!

How about a squid on a stick?

Choux pastry swan?

Banana roti? (We somehow managed to have BOTH of us forget to take a picture of this one, but trust me, it was also delicious. EVERYTHING was delicious.)

Flower market?

Wait – flower market? You can’t eat that.

It was still fascinating, however – all of the floral offerings we had observed being presented at the various temples we had wandered through in the previous two days were clearly being prepared here or somewhere like it.

The day was getting late, but we still had a few more stops. The tuktuk made its way to a Michelin recognized store famous for its mango sticky rice. We were handed a portion of that for later, but also an entire mango. “These are special mangos – they don’t normally sell them separately.”

So we ate a mango. It was a lifetime top three mango, for sure. Pity we also forgot to photograph it. We were getting tired at this point. One last stop in store, however.

We returned to our starting point in Chinatown, and made our way to…

…oh, look! Peking Duck! You should have some of this…

…made our way to a tea shop that we had passed earlier, but that hadn’t been open at the time. We sat down to a fairly intense tea tasting, with a complicated, multi-step process of washing, pouring, rinsing, brewing, and pouring again, for each of the five or so teas we sampled.

And with that, the food tour came to its conclusion at 5 pm. What an amazing day.

Oh, and here’s the haul of what we had in the bag by the end of it:

More or less clockwise from upper left, a bag of pineapple oolong loose leaf tea, some crunchy fried fish, chicken skin, beef floss, some crispy crepes (I know we picked those up at some point, but damned if I remember when, even though we’d clearly already eaten half of them [Note from Leigh: I’m pretty sure these were handed to us while we were at the flower market]), one of the little green bilimbi fruits, a coconut cake, some sausage, two pastry swans, a box of Peking duck wraps, and a portion of Michelin-recommended mango sticky rice.

Whew. That list would make the world’s weirdest rendition of “The Twelve Days of Christmas.”

What else to do after a day like that but go out for cocktails?

Holy hell, what a day.

In addition to eating absolutely everything we possibly could, we also did have every intention of seeing some actual, you know, sights in Bangkok. Our plan for day two was to visit the big three historical sights in the city: the Grand Palace, and the temples of Wat Phra Chetuphon Wimon Mangkhalaram Rajwaramahawihan, (of course I cut and pasted that, what did you think?) or “Wat Pho” for short, and Wat Arun.

We’ll talk about each of those in turn, but first let’s talk about breakfast.

In our research for the trip, I had found some rhapsodic descriptions of a pork leg rice street food seller who was, in theory, located right outside our hotel. But it turns out they weren’t.  So we went looking for them. Pretty sure we didn’t find them, but who cares? We found pork leg rice, and it was amazing.

Also, this was approximately 3 bucks Canadian. I will stop commenting on this fact, probably, but just to be clear – food was insanely cheap throughout the trip, even at the high end.

Thus fortified, we headed for the Grand Palace. En route, we were delighted to encounter our first scammer. “Look honey! A grifter! Just like in the videos!” Specifically, this was a nice woman in a polo shirt who looked like a tourist assistance person who came up to us while we were checking our map, and asked us where we were headed.

When we told her the Grand Palace, she told us that the queen mother had passed away (which was true) and that as a result, the palace would be opening late (which was not). She suggested that we take a tuk tuk over to the south side of the river and tour the temples there. And wouldn’t you know it, at just that moment, a random tuk tuk just happened to pull up and ask if we wanted a ride?

We did not, having been warned about this exact scam by an incredibly Canadian Bangkok YouTuber named “Cal.” (Thanks Cal!  Your videos were awesome, and a great help in many ways.)

So we thanked her politely and moved on to the (very much open) Grand Palace.

A word about the queen mother, though – she passed away about a month before we arrived, but because the royal family occupy a quasi-divine mythology in Thailand, we were just at the start of a year of official mourning. There was black and white bunting and photos of her EVERYWHERE.

This included just about every temple we visited, which was definitely a contrast to the church-state separation we are accustomed to in the west.

The tour of the Grand Palace consists of two main areas – the temple of the Emerald Buddha, and the palace itself. Most of the palace was indeed closed due to official mourning, but we were able to explore the temple.

It’s hard to describe, even with pictures, the maximalist aesthetic on display here. This was a common theme of the whole trip, particularly in the temple-rich environs of Chiang Mai, but unsurprisingly, the complex attached to the royal palace is at the top of this particular heap.  Just a few of our MANY photos:

The one thing we CAN’T show you is a photo of the Emerald Buddha itself, since this was one of the very few temples that didn’t allow photography.

From the temple, we proceeded through to the Grand Palace, but we only got a look at the outside, because mourners.

Many, many mourners. Mass mourners mobilizing for monarchal mother’s memorial.

Ahem. Sorry. But the upshot was that the royal palace and the various museums associated with it were closed. So after having our picture taken by an ACTUAL tourist support person (it FELT disrespectful, but it was their idea, and all the Thai mourners were also taking selfies), we moved on to our next stop.

The next stop was Wat Pho, a large temple complex just south of the palace featuring a very, very large reclining Buddha.

At this point I turned to Leigh and whispered “I like big Buddhas and I cannot lie.” Then I tripped over something and stubbed my toe, so I should probably be more respectful.

And to be clear, the building housing this enormous statue is just one small part of the larger temple complex.

The second picture shows three of the four Chedi dedicated to the first four kings of the Rama dynasty, of which the current king is Rama the tenth.

At this point, we were absolutely overwhelmed, and also it was time for lunch. Wanting to get away from the absolute tourist black hole that is the area around the palace and Wat Pho, we took a ferry up river a few stops to a smaller local market area called Wang Lang, which Google Maps helpfully describes as, “A large open air market with many snacks.”

It certainly was. Sadly, we completely failed to take a PICTURE of our actual lunch (two different delicious curries). We did get a blurry photo of a pandan cake that we had for dessert, but I won’t trouble you with it here.

Because we then walked to the far more photogenic THIRD of the big three sights in downtown Bangkok, the temple of Wat Arun. The walk wasn’t dangerous or anything, but it also wasn’t very INTERESTING. It was along a light industrial street with a naval yard on one side, so not much to see. Probably not on many tourist routes.

The temple itself, however?

Definitely on the tourist routes. Wat Arun, which literally means “Temple of Dawn”, is one of the iconic sites of Bangkok, and is prominently situated at a bend in the river so as to be visible for a long way both up and downstream.

It’s absolutely stunning.

It is also absolutely infested with Instagrammers.

We were tired at this point, it was hot, and we had walked a long way. So we basically just parked at a balcony and watched life’s rich pageant for a while. Life’s rich pageant consisted of many, many people in rented Thai dress, frequently accompanied by rented Thai photographers, taking just that absolutely perfect shot for the ‘gram, artfully ignoring the absolute staggering wonder of Thai architecture that they were standing right next to.

I know, I know…

It really was stupendous, though.

At any rate, after a nice long rest at this gorgeous temple, we made our way back across the river to explore a bit more of Chinatown. We walked through a number of absolutely TINY market streets that you would assume were just too small and full of people to accommodate motorcycles. But you would be wrong.

By this point we were getting tired and hungry, so we decamped to a rooftop bar for our first serving of Pad Thai of the trip, along with some pomelo salad and cocktails. But also this view.

From here, we made our way back to Yaowarat Road and really took in the absolute madness that is one of the great street food areas of the world at night. Faced with an overwhelming number of options, we opted for some nice coconut ice cream, and called it a night.

But we really had no idea what an overwhelming variety of food could look like. Not yet.

(Is that good foreshadowing?  It’s supposed to be foreshadowing.)