Dolphin Friendly

So, our time has come to an end here and I feel very sad because I am going to miss all my new friends at Dolphin. I am going to miss O's mango dacquiris and his card and toothpick tricks. And not to hear Mi's warm friendly greetings each day and cheeky charm is heartbreaking.







Kim and Giet are the owners of the bar at Dolphin, they have created the perfect atmosphere in a magical setting. It feels like home here. I came here to relax, wind down and soak up the sun, sea and fresh air, and I have.






I was going to go on and on about the beautiful wooden salas set back in a tropical garden with a sand floor and all the beautiful statues, textiles, candles, butterflies, toads and geckos too but my words just won't cover it, not even the pictures portray the beauty here. You will just have to come and stay here and see for yourself. A tropical paradise.

I'm In Heaven At Undersky

Finally, the best restaurant on the beach has re-opened. Our first night there Adam and I shared a Whole Grilled Snapper with Undersky Special Coconut Curry sauce. It was delicous and the sauce was so good I thought there wasn't enough served with the fish.

The next day we choose a papaya salad and a Yam Undersky Salad with Cashew Nuts. Both were excellent but I would have to say that the the latter is one of the best salads I have ever tasted. Stir-fried chunks of squid, cubes of barracuda, succulent prawns and small pieces of chicken tossed into a salad of long green beans, tomatoes, onions, spring onions, carrot, finely sliced slivers of lemongrass and roasted cashew nuts all tossed in a dressing of chillies, palm sugar, fish sauce, garlic and lime juice.




Undersky has an extensive Thai menu, in fact the largest on the beach. I highly recommend their coconut shakes, Adam and I have been trying to limit ourselves to one a day. They taste so good they can't be healthy and I think I have the secret fattening ingredient. I will have to experiment when I get home and then I will share the recipe with you.

Morning Glory

No its not what you think, mind out of the gutters please.

It is morning and I have a hangover and instead of my usual bowl of tropical fruit and yoghurt, I decide I need something fried. I have the Morning Glory Hash brown at Dolphin - Morning Glory (Paak Boong) is chopped and added to a courgette/zucchini and potato hash brown with bacon bits. It comes out plate-size, crispy on the outside and soft and steaming in the middle. They say it contains plenty of iron. 'Makes me strong,' says Mi, our friendly barman from Krabi.

It doesn't have a strong flavour, but it is noticeable; an herbaceous, spinach flavour. It is also known as water spinach, water morning glory or water cabbage and is used as a vegetable regularly throughout SE Asian cooking. It looks like long stems of tall grass and is a dark green colour. It is great in vegetable stir-fries and broths.

Fruits of Thailand

Yes, it is a mangosteen (mahng-koot). You may have seen the juice of mangosteen appear on health-food stores shelves - 'it's the new pomegranate', I read somewhere in a London health magazine. But in SE Asia it is known as the 'Queen of Fruits'and I understand why.

The flavour is oh-so sweet and the texture is soft and buttery, it just melts in your mouth. It is the size of a mandarin, with a purple, leathery skin; beneath the skin is another protective coating, a deep red peachy flesh that conceals the edible fruit which looks almost like a small garlic bulb in size and shape.

How to open a mangosteen? Well dig your thumb into the leathery skin and then twist a little and peel off, revealing some of the white bulb, you can continue peeling but its best just to pry it free with your mouth, since they are so juicy. Don't forget to remove the small blak seed the shape of an almond. They are easy to lose in all that sweetness.

I could see mangosteen working with roast pork chops and, instead of the traditional apple sauce or caramelised pears, you could use a few slivers of mangosteen. You should be able to purchase these at your local Asian food market.

Fruits of Thailand

Has anyone guessed what the fruit is at the top of my blog?

KFC - Koh Phangan Fried Chicken

We are in paradise, a great place to stay on a beautiful beach, there is one thing missing though, good food. All the beach-front restaurants catering to Western palates serve up substandard food at inflated prices.

There is one that stands out above the rest and that is 'Nice Beach' , friendly staff and a small Thai menu covering all the basics. Red and green curry, fried rice with cashew nuts and a variety of soups and noodles. We have eaten here everyday for lunch and dinner, along with everyone else that is staying on this beach. In need of a change of scenery and menu Adam & I go in search for some authentic local food to wake-up our jaded palates.

Along the back-streets of Thong Noi Pan Yai we discover a roadside food stall, popular with the locals. Today's special is Fried Chicken Wings and Papaya Salad.




Small, crispy, brown chicken bits are scooped out of a large blackened wok filled with hot oil. They are offered to us for a taste and they are delicious – hot, crunchy and salty. After this the chicken wings are removed from marinating in a batter and placed in the wok.




While the chicken is cooking, the lady asks if we would like a papaya salad and since the last one I ate was in Bangkok, I am keen to try another to see what the regional differences are. We stand there watching the preparation. (see photos)




2 garlic cloves in their skins and 2 chillies are thrown into a large mortar and pestle, pounded, then out comes a small tub of fermented whole baby soft shell crab. I am asked if I would like one of these and I am feeling a little adventurous, so she takes the claws and legs off one and this is added to the mortar and the the rest of the body is thrown in, again this is softly pounded.

Next comes a few long green beans chopped too half a fingers length, more pounding, a heaped teaspoon of palm sugar, a generous splash of fish sauce, a large handful of green papaya (grated into spaghetti length strands), one tomato roughly sliced into wedges, then a pinch of salt and the juice of a lime or two and the rind and tossed well and sprinkled with a few roughly chopped peanuts.

A mound of crunch papaya salad with whole baby soft shell crab comes to our table The first mouthful of salad has a few legs of raw crab. Its salty, tangy, crunchy and there is a slight sea flavour, presumably from the crab. Its fabulous but I can't bring myself to finish the crab purely because its not cooked. I pick it out and the flavour is still in the salad, so no loss there.

The fried chicken arrives piping hot with a golden brown crust, a hint of chilli and tender chicken.
It's all finger-lickin' good here! We take a bag of chicken bits to go. We snack on them later, they are cold, have lost their crunch and it suddenly dawns us that we have been eating chicken giblets...

Som Tum Yum Yum

(Apologies for any confusion, due to technical difficulties this entry precedes the last)

After 1 taxi, an overnight train, a bus, 2 boats, and a jeep we have arrived in Thong Nai Pan Noi, a small beach on the Northeast side of Ko Pha Ngan. And since my last meal was over 17 hours ago, I have an appetite. We have lunch at Baan Panburi, too expensive for us to stay there but certainly affordable to eat in their restaurant. A terraced restaurant on the beach, with a choice of seating – recline on a sala, take a table on the beach or sit on the terrace.

The menu seems to be like all other menus along the beachfront – it caters for tourists. Five pages of Western food and then finally two pages of Thai dishes. It bothers me seeing tourists not eating Thai food. I could rant and rave for hours on this subject but I won't. So I choose the Som tum salad, which also is the name for a papaya salad, I have yet to find out if there is another name for the carrot salad.

A mound of freshly grated carrot, a few raw slightly pounded crisp long green beans, a few slivers of orange tomatoes, a couple of wedges of lime skin, roughly chopped cashews and peanuts, all tossed in a tangy, garlic, spicy dressing. I have awoken, my mouth is bursting with flavours, I could scare not only vampires but any beast away.

Happy Snapper

Our first evening on the beach, there are a dozen restaurants to choose from yet everyone is eating in just one, the Baan Panburi, so we return for dinner.

Adam chose the chef's special - A prawn Curry cooked in a fresh coconut. The style of curry is called Kaeng Phanaeng which translates as curry thick and savoury with peanuts. A whole shaved coconut appears with a square lid cut open from the top, inside is a thick creamy coconut curry, medium-spiced, a hint of peanuts, fat juicy prawns and slivers of fresh coconut, adding an interesting jelly texture. A lovely curry but quite rich with so much coconut cream.




In addition the the menu and the chef's specials there is a bbq beach hut with a selection of seafood on display from the day's catch. Red snapper, white snapper, tuna, barracuda and even shark.




If you are wondering what the difference is between the red and white snapper, white snapper has more flesh to eat. So since I am not paying by weight, I choose a whole white snapper to be grilled on the bbq for 200 baht (£3-4) and it arrives with a plate of rice served in the shape of a heart, a carrot and cabbage salad and a small bowl of spicy dressing. The dressing is made from lime juice, chillies, garlic, fermented fish sauce and palm sugar. Salty, sour, sweet and spicy, strong but all in harmony, it complements the fish and plain rice. I enjoyed the dressing so much I ordered another bowl - who cares about the ring of fire.

An Oasis in Soi 16

If you want to escape the heat and chaos of Bangkok then Shanti Lodge is the place, an oasis of tranquility.

Take your shoes off at the door, step inside and cool your feet on the clean stone floors. Everything you need is here. 600-800 baht (ฃ10) will get you a basic room for 2 people in Bangkok but what makes the Shanti Lodge special, are the extra touches that make you feel at home.

Our double room was 700 baht - a carved wood bed with Thai Silk bedspread, a silent and clean air-conditioning unit, and an optional fan, a safe, a selection of books, ornaments on the walls – butterfly chimes, dimmer lights (always important to get the atmosphere right), a sparkling mosaic tiled bathroom, handmade painted pottery sink, clean dark wood floors.

On the second floor, an open terrace with beds, here you can have a Thai Yoga Massage for up to 2 hours for 300 baht ( a fiver). Adam & I both indulged on our first night staying here, our knotted muscles, stress and tension released and we both ended up in a meditative state. Highly recommended, don't forget to leave a tip, those ladies deserve it.

There is a laundry service, internet, luggage storage and clothing shop. Speak with friendly and informative Yuan, the manager of both Shanti Lodge, Bangkok and Shanti Farm, Phuket for 20 years or so now, who can help with all your onward travel plans and arrange visas. Yuan has some stories to tell and will also update you on all the tourist scams to avoid.

On the ground floor is the Shanti restaurant, a lovely open space yet private with sneaking views to watch the hum of street life. Ceiling fans keep you cool and the mosquito coils keep the mozzies away. The Shanti mainly caters for vegetarians, ( a few meat and seafood dishes available) priding itself on the careful preparation of good produce. All fruits and vegetables are soaked and washed to remove pesticide residues and they use organic food where possible.

My first meal was a soothing and restorative soup (usually eaten at breakfast time), perfect after a long flight and a massage. A flavoursome broth filled with finely diced vegetables, tofu, red rice, fine slivers of ginger and sprigs of coriander.




I can highly recommend the phat thai (you may know it as pad thai or pat thai), a Thai version of a fry-up, subtle tamarind and lime, silken egg noodles, crisp bean sprouts, egg, succulent prawns and on the side roasted, crushed peanuts, dried crushed chillies and lime to tweak the flavours to your own desire.

The Shanti has managed to relieve our tensions, nourish our souls, and prepare us for a long journey ...

Food For Fun

Hot, hungry and smelling of eel water we hatch a plan to head for Siam Square, (Shopping Plaza Mecca), an excuse to escape the heat and purchase some well-needed walking sandals. We discover 'Food for Fun'

A food hall with around 20 kitchens, preparing one-plate dishes, representing regional food from all over Thailand. On arrival you receive a card, peruse each kitchen, select what you want to eat. Your card logs each dish and the price, and you pay on the way out.

A variety of soups, red and green curries with pork, chicken, squid or fried fish, Massaman Curry, Beef Rendang, spicy omelettes, stuffed mussels, noodle and rice dishes, carrot and papaya salads. And even stir-fried ox genitals.

It was difficult to choose but in the end we both picked relatively unexciting dishes. (Adam will go there eventually, I promise)

Adam chose a green curry with fish and got a green curry with pork (as you do when you don't speak Thai), it was served with steamed rice and a bowl of clear broth with shallots. I chose Stir-fried Kale with Crispy pork. It was very hot and garlicky, but sadly no crispy pork, the crispy was left in the wok.



Mouth on fire, I grabbed a lemongrass drink to cool down. I have only tasted lemongrass in cooking so I was curious. It tastes like it smells, a little overwhelming if you use too much. The drink was refreshing but a little sickly from the use of sugarcane syrup, too sweet for me.

It would have been a great introduction to regional food, all menus were translated into English but unfortunately didn't also name where it was from, so we missed out. With full tummies, we jumped into a taxi and fell asleep for 30 minutes stuck in Bangkok traffic.

Bangkok Bites!

36 hours in Bangkok and I amazingly have just been bitten for the first time, and while the mosquitoes are feasting on me I begin my search for a feast in Banglamphu.

This morning while trying to find the river boat pier we got lost and stumbled into the local food market, and it truly was alive. Adam and I got caught up at the fish stand, splashed by eels attempting to escape from vats of water and slipping on fish guts. There was a vast selection of fish but the only one I recognised was the frisky catfish.

We passed stall after stall with various cuts of chicken, pork, duck and their bits. Next came the frogs, displayed in all sorts of positions - a few wore their hearts on the outside. Men squatting over the floor with old-fashioned juice presses, freshly squeezing baskets of limes. Women pounding garlic and chillies, making pastes for their special sauces. The final stalls displayed an abundance of chillies, wild leaves and herbs.

It was a small, exciting market and a great introduction to local food. Now all we have to find is someone to cook us some food.