Day 39 - Eating in Chumphon (Thailand)

Other than the time we had to treck through sewage, our last four days which we spent on the island of Koh Phi Phi were very pleasant and relaxing. As is what's the norm when one visits such a place, we did some eating and some sleeping, some swimming and some walking, some drinking and some sleeping. We even visited Maya Bay where the movie The Beach was filmed, and went for a snorkel in the rain.

Now we're back to the real part of our trip where we drive on local roads and stay in obscure towns that most white people have never heard of. We have been very pleasantly surprised with the roads so far. The main highway we have taken through Thailand from Malaysia is of a standard that one would find in Australia (possibly better than some parts of Australia), and even the side streets are all pretty well sealed and of a regular width.

Our destination today was Chumphon, which is a charming town close to untouched by tourism. We're staying in a pretty reasonable hotel - the type that have lifts and a lobby and off-street parking. After checking out all the hostels and guesthouses in the area, we found that it's actually a lot cheaper to do it this way - and we get a much better room. This is where the locals stay, so this is how to get local prices.

As we've had a couple of great experiences of ordering food at a place with no menu and no English, we have become pretty gung-ho with our choice of restaurants. This evening we chose one that was buzzing with locals, which we found very appealing in it's busyness and amount of smoke coming from all sorts of cooking throughout the room. As we sat down, a couple of hot tiles were put on our table and some sort of metal device that had something on it that looked like food. We were getting pretty excited, but then the guy just looked at us expectantly. So we sort of tried to ask what we were supposed to do, but as we were speaking to him in English, he was speaking back in Thai. So we decided to just go for it and started saying various words such as chicken, meat etc. Unforunately it was to no avail, as we were received by a blank stare and lots of funny looks from our fellow diners. As a result, I am ashamed to say, we gave up and went to the next restaurant where we sat on a table on the road and were given the option of pad thai with chicken, tofu or egg, and when we ordered drinks she crossed the road to the convenience store and bought them for us.