Back on the mainland—and oh, so happy!
Van, Ferry, Bus, TukTuk—we took them all (in that order too!) and with no pre-arranged bookings cuz that’s how we roll! It all fell in place as transportation does here in Thailand. 4.5 hours and 320 bhats later (about $24) we were in our new hotel in real Thailand (on the mainland), swimming in the big pool.
We took a TukTuk ride to the bike shop downtown. While sitting at a red light in a very busy intersection the driver gestured diagonally down the road toward the bike shop that was around the corner. We didn’t understand, and what we interpreted was “You farangs! Get out right here, right now! Quick!” So we scrambled to collect bags and Randy ejected himself lickety split straight out the back of the TukTuk in between lanes of busy city traffic. Suddenly Tuktuk-driver-lady spots Randy scrambling in between the moving traffic as the light turned green. She’s gesturing wildly to “get back innnnnnn!!!”, but by this time Randy’s hopped skipped & lept over to the safety of the sidewalk while Deana and I reflexively remained on the TukTuk. What TukTuk lady had really been requesting was confirmation it was that bike shop we wanted to go to. Forced to move with the traffic we had to abandon Randy, all of us laughing. Bye bye Randy!! Poor Randy…
And now there’s the 2023 Surat Thani Food Fair. We saw it advertised last week before going to Samui. Since Thailand is a virtual food fest extravaganza every day, we tried to reconcile in our minds what might actually happen at an actual food fair! Tonight we ventured down crooked misaligned sidewalks to answer that very question.
Food! Music! More food! Enough food to feed a million Thais (or half a million Canadians). Food as far as the eye can see. Squids on sticks, crabs of every size & color, prawns big enough to scare small children, fish rotisserating around charcoal grills, and even buckets with live eels squirming ‘round and turtles trying to escape their buckets….we hate to think they are being sold as anything but pets, but we didn’t really want to know. It’s a seaside city, so no surprise about the quantity and variety of seafood. There were also twisty foreign looking pork parts that might have been their innards—again, we will leave that question unanswered and also un-tasted.
We’ll let the pictures do the talking!
Bye bye Randy! Sorry ‘bout the traffic, lol!
The wonderful lady who boxed up our bicycles at Racing World in Surat Thani
Not being a seafood lover I don’t think I would fare well there! Lol Surprised Randy didn’t give anything odd a try!
I would have to agree with Tara about the seafood.
Thanks Anita for your enthusiastic reports. I’m learning a lot about Thailand. Couldn’t tolerate the heat but I wish I could visit that food market. Looks amazing – a few weird things too. Great to hear about the cycling and to see all the photos.
Ah the lovely food markets. Always a treat, always an adventure!
It’s not a very diet friendly event, that’s for sure!
What do they do with the leftover food? Was the bike shop the right one after all that?
What is going on at the back of the ferry? When there are only 2 people at the back of the theatre we often wonder.