February 26th, 2013 - Pancakes, Storms, and Possessed Air Conditioners

My pancake addiction is unrelenting. Geogirl and I went to Secret Cove this morning for a delicious pancake breakfast and enjoyed a brief but pleasant walk along the beach—brief, due to the heat.

It was 33^oC. I’m used to insane temperature changes at home—sunny one moment, freak snowstorm  the next—and I barely notice most of the time (only enough to complain about it, naturally). But here, three degrees higher than usual seems to make a huge difference. It was positively sweltering today, even though it was overcast. And, of course, we walked the 3 km roundtrip to Ao Yon and back, which includes multiple hills, so by the time we returned home we were both exhausted and in desperate need of air conditioning.

February 16th, 2013 - Chinese New Year Festival in Phuket Town

It’s the year of the snake, and we’ve just returned from a fantastic evening in Old Phuket Town! Phuket’s Chinese New Year Festival for 2013 is being held from February 15^th-17^th in conjunction with the 14^th Annual Old Phuket Festival. This is all taking place along four main roads: Thalang, Krabi, Dibuk, and Phang Nga. For the first time during our trip so far, pedestrians actually outnumbered vehicles—by a lot. The streets were teeming with people tonight.

A shot of one of the streets, before the festival had even really started.

On Leaving - Geogirl

The worst things to happen to people in life are not acute but chronic. The things that aren't visible, the stuff that takes place entirely inside yourself. There's no beginning, no point that you can see where it started, but somehow you've reached adulthood having given up on all your dreams. No one tells you straight out that your dreams are impossible, but they don't need to, do they? You get the message loud and clear without ever hearing the words.

February 15th, 2013 - Panwa Bay, Live India, and Walks Along the Beach

We took a long walk up to Panwa Bay Village and along the pier today.

The Pier.

Panwa Restaurants - The Captain's Bar and Lounge - 1/5 Stars

Meeeeeh is the only way to describe this place. Like the Moon House, it's attached to a small hotel/guest house, but it's far more up-market. The Captain's Bar rises above the ground on lovely slate stairs, and enters an open air lounge that has excellent views of the harbour. They seem to play a few Michael Buble CDs on continuous repeat (I think he's really big in Thailand). It's very clean, and is the closest to a North American-type restaurant as we've seen here in Thailand. For one, there's actually a cash register like you'd see in a McDonalds, with a neatly labelled screen of menu items (I think. It was in Thai.)


With all that going for it, you'd think it be a winner, but unfortunately, the Captain's Bar seemed determined to disappoint us.

1) It's only open for breakfast (6 to 9), lunch (12 to 3), and dinner (6 to 12?). Scheduling your meals around that isn't particularly easy.
2) It serves cocktails in what I believe are double shotglasses. Tiny for the 140 baht price tag.
3) The food was the first flavourless thing that either of us had managed to eat in Thailand. Bland and expensive, my pineapple fried rice came with very pretty garnishes and was served inside a hollowed out pineapple, but it had little flavour other than a touch of curry. Lucky Star's Pad Thai seemed to have been cooked without seasoning, leaving it about as flavourful as a sock.

All together, both LuckyStar and I agree that this place is DEFINITELY not worth visiting. It gets a 1 out of 5 on the Regrettable to Edible Scale of Restaurant Judging.

Panwa Restaurants - Ship Inn Bar and Restaurant - 2/5 Stars

It's a good restaurant, but the Secret Cove is literally right next door. The Secret Cove has a more extensive menu, better service, cheaper prices and more comfortable seating. The chairs at the Ship Inn don't allow you to slide your legs under the table with any comfort, which gets annoying very fast. The service was decent, but again, Secret Cove was better. And finally, the food also left me wishing we'd just gone to the Secret Cove instead.

Over all, not a bad place, but due to its location (right next to a better and cheaper restaurant), I doubt we'll ever go back.

We give this restaurant a 2 on the Regrettable to Edible Scale of Restaurant Judging.

February 12th, 2013 - Ship Inn, Snails & Hermit Crabs

We had dinner at the Ship Inn Bar & Restaurant tonight, which is adjacent to the Secret Cove. It didn’t win us over the way Secret Cove has, but the food was good and it has the same view. The tide was very low when we went out—so low that we could walk far out along the sandbars.

Ao Yon at low tide

It was along these sandbars that we found entire little ecosystems thriving in the sand. There were thousands of shells, most of them tiny, and most of them very much inhabited. This was pretty thrilling to us—not something I’ve had the chance to experience in Canada before, and never to this degree in Mexico. We spent the better part of an hour combing through the wet sand, inspecting all of the snails and hermit crabs. I took a ridiculous amount of pictures, but I’ll show some self-restraint and only post a few here:



- LuckyStar

Panwa Restaurants - The Moon House - 4/5 Stars

This little place is attached a small hotel, and is right off the main road on Panwa Cape.

Downsides--the traffic is very loud. Our first visit was somewhat unimpressive, but subsequent visits have cemented this restaurant as one of our favorites. They have very friendly service, and quite good food.




I don't recommend the banana and ice cream milkshakes at all--they used some kind of ice cream that tasted like nothing so much as an abomination when mixed with banana, and over all? Big no on the milkshakes.

On the other hand, my fried rice was pretty damn tasty (though not as good as the fried rice I ate on Karon Beach, which should be recorded in history as the finest fried rice ever made), and LuckyStar's pad thai was excellent. We're becoming major connoisseurs of fried rice and pad thai, but hey. We like what we like!

In addition, I heartily recommend their Papaya Salad as one of the best tasting things I've ever eaten, and Luckystar has a strange love affair going on with their veggie burger.

The Moon House gets a 4 out of 5 on the Regrettable to Edible Scale of Restaurant Judging.

February 6th, 2013 - Violently Stupid Wasps

A Wasp. Or Possibly a Bee.

There is a nest of wasps lurking beneath our balcony. They might be bees. Hard to say. What we do know for sure is that these wasps are violently stupid. Both Geo and myself have been stung now, and neither of us are happy about it. She was stung on the wrist and had to dig out the stinger. I had a wasp fall down the back of my shirt. Yeah. You can imagine how entertaining I found that.

The thing is, I was just sitting there, minding my own business, totally willing to peacefully coexist with this wasp. Out of nowhere, he suddenly notices me (thirty minutes into flying aimlessly around the balcony and knocking into things), and he divebombs me. I don’t even know if it was intentional.

It looked like he’d gotten lost, confused the gas pedal with the brakes, and just flew into me at full speed. At first he bounced off, stumbling around a bit like he was drunk, and then he somehow managed to fall down the back of my shirt, presumably because it seemed like a good idea at the time. It was about five minutes later that I realized this.

Good news: neither of us went into anaphylactic shock! No allergies for us, apparently. This is useful to know.

Better news: the wasps die after stinging you. And I’m not talking about a simple dropping-dead-out-of-the-sky kind of death. Oh no. They land on their backs and start freaking out, whipping around in little circles on the concrete while buzzing very loudly for a solid five minutes, around and around and around. It was quite a production. A touch melodramatic, if you ask me.

Now, when we come out in the mornings, there are little wasp carcasses strewn about all over the balcony, and armies of tiny ants dragging them away in disturbingly large pieces. The wasps seem to be ramming their little wasp bodies into stationary objects, such as the wall or the balcony door, and they do so with so much zeal that it kills them. Hence, the wasps being violently stupid. We don’t understand what’s wrong with them, but at the rate they’re killing themselves off, we may soon no longer have a wasp problem.

- LuckyStar

February 5th, 2013 - Ao Yon Beach

Ao Yon Beach (By Secret Cove)

Geo and I walked to Ao Yon Beach today, intent on exploring the section of beach that lies around the corner from Secret Cove. I’m not sure if it has its own special name, but it’s a lovely spot. There seem to be frequent weddings (or wedding photoshoots, at least) taking place in this particular area, no doubt due to the scenery.

February 3rd, 2013 - Grocery Missions and Taxi Misadventures

Today's Random Photo: Sunrise in Panwa

Mission: First Solo Excursion into Phuket Town
Objective: Groceries

Groceries, as I’ve mentioned before, are weirdly difficult for us. I’m certain we are doing the grocery-thing wrong. I mean, they’re groceries, this isn’t neurobiology or anything. And I did take a neurobiology class (God help me), so I should be capable of this, right?

And yet.