Udon Thani and Trat

We had two transition cities in a row, getting us from Chiang Khan to Koh Kood -- one was wonderful, the other was really, really not. The really-not one first:

Lee, at our great hotel in Chiang Khan, arranged a private taxi to take us to Udon Thani, a 3-ish-hour drive on multi-laned highways. Udon Thani has a history with the US government, which had an important military base there during the Vietnam War. The Royal Air Force Base there is also a CIA "black site," and was used to interrogate one of bin Laden's top guys. One of the first things we noticed was all the western white guys, first at our hotel pool, and then clogging all the small bars around our hotel. Like, exclusively white guys, and without accompanying white women. Our hotel was OK enough, it only needed to give us a place to sleep and it did that well enough.

Urban pool, very different from our lovely Chiang Khan pool!

As always, Marc had done a lot of research to find us a good place to eat dinner that night, and he scouted out the location before we both headed over. It looked a bit strange, in a kind of mall at the edge of some outdoor food stall kind of malls, but we couldn't argue with the ratings and the photos of the food and menu we'd seen. (But we learned a pro tip: it's not enough to see the menu and recognize that they also provide English, without pausing just a second to see what the English is. A simple English version of the Thai name for a dish tells us nothing if we don't know what that dish is.) (As we would realize.)

The interior had extremely tall ceilings and a kind of .... ballroom feel, maybe? But then they had utilitarian tables and chairs, like you might get at Office Depot, and the mismatched vibe was really strange. They handed us menus and here we went -- what is Tom Blah Blah? What is it, exactly? What's in it? We couldn't figure anything out, and there was no English spoken by staff, so we kind of picked stuff and hoped for the best. We wanted two waters, and they brought one but kept it on a little trolley away from the table. I reached over and got it and put it on the table, and the waitress put it back. Only she was going to be serving water. Each time we'd take a sip of water, she'd swoop in, take away our glass, slowly top it off, and then put it back on the table. But here's the thing: the food was so, so awful that we needed water available at all times. We ordered one thing that seemed to have quadruply fermented crab coated in fermented fermentation something and then the whole thing rotted and fermented. At first, the loud crunch of what we think might've been crab legs was hopeful: maybe it would be as great as the meal we had our last night in Chiang Khan, that had super crunchy pork belly. But then the rancid, putrid taste hit us. I'd also ordered Pad Thai, just to be safe (the only dish name I recognized), and it was serviceable but if it touched a microscopic bit of juice from that rancid crab thing, the bite was disgusting. I put my napkin over the untouched food on my plate, and we paid and left. The taste in our mouths was so gross we found a 7-11 (ubiquitous!) and got ice cream bars. Back at the room I brushed my teeth long and hard, trying to get the taste out of my mouth.

Just looking at this nasty-ass dish is enough to activate my gag reflex

Udon Thani was just so strange. One the one hand, it felt like Fake Thai, for westerners, but at the same time it was really Thai, inaccessible to westerners. I still can't figure out what or how to think about Udon Thani, but I don't need to waste any time trying to understand because we'll not be going back. We asked the front desk of the hotel to arrange a taxi -- a thing they readily do, everywhere we go -- and the crazy price made sense when we saw that we were being taken by the hotel's van. For just the two of us. 

To get to Trat, we flew one hour to Bangkok (BKK), where we had to retrieve our luggage, check in to another flight and check our luggage, then go through security. Luckily they'd delayed our second flight to Trat so we didn't have to stress out -- especially since dealing with BKK always seems to mean walking from the farthest end of the terminal to one spot (baggage claim), then eventually walking to a different farthest end for the next thing. We flew on Bangkok Airways, the only flight available to Trat, and we really enjoy BA. They have private airports that are kind of precious. In Sukkothai, the BA airport also has a zoo, and the employees wear pith helmets. In both airports, you are fetched from the plane by trolleys that are kind of station-wagon golf carts, and driven from the runway to the airport building. Luggage arrives in little wagons, and the guy take it off the wagons and put it on the platform, where you retrieve it. At Trat, every employee salutes you.

The flight was 45 minutes, but they served us a hot lunch
of chicken and curried rice, and it was a thousand times 
better than that gross food in Udon Thani.

So funny, the trolleys from the runway.

luggage pickup

We were picked up by a songthaew, arranged by the Rimklong Hotel for us for the 40-minute ride into Trat. We'd stayed at the Rimklong seven years earlier, and liked it a lot. It's small, convenient to things we're interested in, and we were in luck with our Saturday night stay because it was the monthly big fancy street market on the street in front of our hotel.

The hotel lobby -- a huge espresso machine, but
cappucinos served in tiny tea cups.

the street in front of the hotel, empty for now, but
soon packed with stalls

The sweet guy who runs the Rimklong (and who would talk your right arm off and whisper in the hole) advised us of a good place to eat, so we wandered a little bit, down the street to see a wat. 

Entering the grounds of Wat Phai Lom --
I love that big beautiful tree (and my
travel partner)

these doors!

The restaurant seemed to be a family-run place -- the grandma and grandpa seemed to greet us as we walked in -- and while the interior wasn't fancy, the food was a relief, because it was passably good enough. After that terrible food in Udon Thani, we're kind of burnt and shy about it, but the menu provided brief English descriptions of each dish so we at least knew what we were getting. My shrimp curry had way more pineapple and way less heat than I'd have preferred, but it was good!

My shrimp pineapple curry

Marc's fish, with a good spicy sauce

And this salad, which was really so, soo good, but I
don't now remember what it was, for sure. Besides good.

After dinner, we walked through the night market, where Marc got us some banana pancakes ("Honey, it's a good thing you didn't watch her making them to see how much oil she used.") We ate them in our room and then wandered out to the street market going gangbusters. It's a monthly event, and it seemed like a chance for friends, families, to catch up with each other, for young people to see each other, for musicians to play, and for people to do all kinds of shopping, not just for food and snacks, but for clothing, jewelry, purses, shoes, etc. We noticed an endless amount of sushi for sale -- booths with essentially sushi buffets set up, and as I told Marc, "One thing I'm not gonna do is eat street sushi on a hot, steamy night in Trat."

My traditional spot: waiting on a curb, somewere outside of
the general hubbub, while Marc explores the market looking
for something for us to eat. And sure enough, he brings
something delicious for us to eat, as he did with our
banana pancakes.

It's a real scene!

Just so much delicious-smelling street food.
Plus lots of street sushi.

The next morning we were sharing a songthaew with other Rimklong guests to the ferry (40 minutes, everything seems to take 40 minutes to an hour!), for the ferry ride (an hour) out to Trat. They were a sweet couple from the Netherlands with a 3yr old son, and we had a very nice conversation about the terrible state of politics in the US and the Netherlands. It's often the case that we're in a "we'll figure it out when we get there" kind of thing. When we left the songthaew, while we had pre-purchased ferry tickets, it was a big scene and nothing was clear. We went to a window and showed the image of our ferry tickets, then were handed two white tickets and pointed to a different area. It seemed we were going to get on a songtheaw kind of thing to be taken to the pier, so we got on, and yep, dropped at the pier. We kind of saw that we'd need to get our luggage from the wagon and carry it onto the ferry, where someone took it, and we found seats, and off we went. 

These life jackets were the MOST confusing things! The 
ferry staff had to keep showing people, one at a time, how to
figure it out. I still couldn't tell you how to do it, and when 
we leave, I'll have to figure it out all over again. Ridiculous.

When the ferry stopped on Koh Kood, it was a reverse version of getting on. Standing on the pier, we figured out that they were going to unload our suitcases in some way, and then we got ours and now what? We saw a ramp, walked over there, lots of songthaews, no idea what to do, how to get to the hotel (Marc had asked them ahead of time and got no reply), but we finally learned that there was a woman with a clipboard who'd tell us which numbered songthaew we should get on. Our Netherlands friends were staying in the same place, so it was nice to see them and their adorable little boy.

But the hotel itself is for the next post because WHOO BOY.