{"id":2583,"date":"2025-11-23T21:20:25","date_gmt":"2025-11-24T05:20:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/?p=2583"},"modified":"2025-12-16T17:09:15","modified_gmt":"2025-12-17T01:09:15","slug":"thailand-day-4-koh-kret","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/?p=2583","title":{"rendered":"Thailand, Day 4: Koh Kret"},"content":{"rendered":"

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.<\/p>\n

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

One of the most intriguing videos<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Spoiler: We only did some of that.<\/p>\n

The route up there from our hotel in Chinatown is a bit convoluted.\u00a0 First we walked down to the ferry, and snapped a few pictures of amazing street art on the way.<\/p>\n

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\nThese were all on Song Wat Road, a funky little street by the river in Chinatown that we really liked.<\/p>\n

From there, we boarded a ferry to take us as far up the river as we could go by boat.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nWe noticed that the river seemed to be very high – the ferry was slowing down\u00a0dramatically<\/em> as it came up to bridges, and was very carefully passing under the very center of the arches, with inches to spare.\u00a0 This turned out to be an unfortunate foreshadowing of what we would find on Koh Kret.<\/p>\n

But first we had to GET to Koh Kret.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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That small tower, or\u00a0stupa<\/em>, 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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

We were able to wander about the temple grounds, which were just high enough to be OK.<\/p>\n

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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.<\/p>\n

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.)<\/p>\n

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\nThis 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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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

Which is how we ended up at the cat cafe.<\/p>\n

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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.\u00a0 Maybe it’s what Thai people think Japanese sounds like in English?<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

I can’t show you a street view shot, of course, because I\u00a0guarantee\u00a0<\/em>that car has never made it back here.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.)<\/p>\n

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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.<\/p>\n

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I have no idea what I’m doing in this picture.\u00a0 I probably didn’t have any idea what I was doing at the time, either.<\/p>\n

Rorsor127<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

But not before enjoying drinks and a sunset.<\/p>\n

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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.\u00a0 We’ll just take as read that everything was amazing from this point.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nEggplant Thai salad on crispy rice sheet with fried red ant eggs:
\n\"\"<\/a>
\nWestern-style fried truffle and crab meat croquette.\u00a0 This one came under a bell jar full of smoke, which was neat.
\n\"\"<\/a>
\nSteamed rice mixed with chili paste served with Thai garnishes:
\n\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Thai rice noodles with sweet and sour curry. (Mom’s secret recipe!) (The chef’s mom, not MY mom.)
\n\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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Envy us. This meal was un-fing-believable.<\/p>\n

Oh, and candle-smoked coconut milk over Thai jelly for dessert.<\/p>\n

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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.<\/p>\n

This is an experience we will definitely keep with us for a long time.<\/p>\n

And from there, boat to Grab back to the hotel, and time to pack up to move on to our next stop in Thailand!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2589,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2583","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-thailand"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2583","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2583"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2583\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2675,"href":"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2583\/revisions\/2675"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2589"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fnerk.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}